Canada just approved a chemical used to clean up oil spills, even though it often doesn’t work and actually becomes up to 52 times more toxic to marine life than oil alone.

Here is something that will surprise and maybe horrify you: Big Oil can’t clean up ocean oil spills. Even Transport Canada confirms that only 10 to 15% of any spill is ever recovered by industry. Instead, oil companies use a “dispersant” called Corexit that only breaks the oil down into smaller pieces -- which actually makes the toxicity in oil more accessible to marine life.

Approving Corexit does two things, neither good: one, it makes it look like oil companies have cleaned up massive spills when they haven’t; two, it poses an even greater risk to some marine life than just oil alone.

I don’t think so, Environment Canada. Reverse your decision to approve the harmful, toxic Corexit now.

In 2010, when BP’s Deepwater Horizon well blew some 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the fossil fuel giant dumped 6.8 million litres of Corexit after it to clean it up. Rather than fix the worst environmental disaster the world has ever known, the chemical actually killed oil-eating bacteria. And record numbers of bottlenose dolphins died of lung poisoning anyway—likely because of the way Corexit made it easier to accumulate smaller particles of oil.

And now for the most sinister part: there’s a reason oil companies have successfully pushed the Liberal government to approve Corexit. It’s because with a “now you see it now you don’t” magic (but misleading) cure for oil spills, it will be far easier to approve bitumen pipelines to tidewater -- where spills are virtually guaranteed to happen with the vast increase in supertankers. If we let Environment Canada approve Corexit unopposed, we’ll be giving a smokescreen for future oil spills in our precious ocean ecosystems.

We’re not going to let that happen. Demand that Environment Canada reverse its decision and ban Corexit in Canada.

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