You would think at this point we would cease to be surprised at Enbridge’s baffling public communications. Yet they continue to astound us. That is certainly the case with the latest ad they’ve published in the Detroit Free Press. They appear to be utterly incapable of presenting even the most basic information without misleading or dissembling. But we’ll say this much: at least they’re consistent.

Before we scrutinize the latest ad, we should first point out that the ads haven’t at all been what Enbridge Vice President Mark Sitek (and our partner in conversation) promised in the first one of the series. There he said that in the coming weeks Enbridge would

. . . use space in this newspaper to share project updates and to address some of these questions. We will expand on the purpose of the projects and what community members can expect from us. We will present our process for reaching right-of-way agreements with landowners. We will also provide insight into the regulatory process and requirements guiding the projects’ development.

Enbridge hasn’t really expanded on any of this in the first two ads. They’ve presented only the most generalized information along with some run-of-the-mill sloganeering. That pattern holds true this week, where under the heading “Working Together,” we are introduced to the friendly-looking “Shelly Iliff, Indiana resident, 8 years with Enbridge,” who is apparently devoted to “Establishing relationships with landowners.”

As we said about Rusty Smith last week, we’re sure that Shelly Iliff is a perfectly good and decent person. In fact, as natives of the Hoosier state ourselves, we’re even inclined to think she’s more decent than most. Which is appropriate, since the average person looking at this ad might very well (if that person were as credulous as Enbridge seems to assume) come away with the impression that Enbridge really does, as the ad says, “work…together with landowners to reach fair agreements” because “At the end of the day, you’re our neighbors.”

Now the question of whether Enbridge reaches “fair agreements” with landowners is one we’ll have to leave open. There is no way for us to know what sorts of agreements Enbridge has reached with most landowners. And we have no doubt that plenty of landowners believe that their agreements with Enbridge were quite fair. In our case, we don’t think our agreement was fair at all, not by a long shot, and we know many other landowners who feel the same about theirs.

Setting that question aside, what has us a bit flummoxed is the image Enbridge seeks to portray about just how these agreements are reached. In the ad, it’s as if they’re just friendly discussions between neighbors “working together” in a spirit of cooperation and neighborly good cheer. As people who have actually been through the negotiation process, however, let us count the ways the presentation of it in the ad is misleading:

The first thing that we found a little odd was the description of Shelly Iliff as a “landowner representative.” We’d never heard that term before. In fact, we don’t know anyone who has spoken with a “landowner representative.” We met with a Right-of-Way Agent (sometimes called a Land Agent) and everybody else we’ve spoken with– other landowners, Enbridge reps, attorneys, elected officials– has talked about Right-of-Way Agents, too. So we Googled “Enbridge” and “landowner representative.” And when we did, all we came up with were a handful of hits, all of them in some Canadian context. So perhaps it’s just that these ads are being produced up in Canada and something is getting lost in translation. Or perhaps the clever folks in the Enbridge marketing department wanted to convey the impressions that the job of Right of Way Agents is to represent landowners– in which case “landowner representative” sounds much better. But of course, that is not the job of Right-of-Way Agents at all; they represent Enbridge entirely, we assure you.

Secondly, what’s stranger still about this “landowner representative” business is that it appears that this is not at all what Shelly Iliff actually does at Enbridge. Some more Googling yielded, among other things, some hits at Linkedin and a few other places which indicate that Ms. Iliff was at one time an “Assistant Right-of-Way Agent,” but that she is now a “Public Awareness Coordinator.” Now to be clear: we don’t much care what Shelly Iliff’s job is at Enbridge. We harbor not the slightest bit of ill will towards her. It just seems to us a little strange that Enbridge would, for whatever reason, rename her job title for this ad. “Landowner representative” smells to us like something that’s been cooked up by the marketing department. It’s yet another example of Enbridge’s seeming inability just to be straightforward and forthright. As we’ve noted before, Enbridge just seems to have trouble calling things what they actually are.

Thirdly, far worse than that little bit of title-polishing is the notion that “landowner representatives” or Right-of-Way Agents or whatever you want to call them– the people charged with reaching agreements with landowners– are loyal Enbridge employees and the “neighbors” of those with whom they are negotiating. That notion is profoundly misleading. The truth of the matter is this: the right-of-way agents who knock on the doors of landowners and commence negotiations are not actually Enbridge employees at all (perhaps some are, but we sure don’t know of any). Rather, they are freelancers or contractors; in some (many?) cases, it is our understanding that they work for another company that contracts with Enbridge. So these agents–freelancers, third-party contractors– swoop in from wherever and do a job– negotiating on behalf of Enbridge– and then they move on to the next job negotiating on behalf of some other company in some other state.

Fourth, the idea that ROW agents are our neighbors–which seems to imply that they will care in some special neighborly way, lest it make for awkward encounters down at the general store or at PTA meetings– is pure nonsense. We have personally met five Enbridge Right-of-Way Agents and not one of them is from Michigan. One was from Arkansas, one from Kentucky, two from Tennessee, and the other from Minnesota. And of the other ROW agents we know about who have been working with Line 6B landowners, not a single one is from Michigan. We’re beginning to think that not only does Enbridge not know what it means to be neighborly; they seem not to know the definition of the word neighbor at all.

Fifth, there’s the ad’s description of what it is people like Shelly Iliff actually do:

… work out agreements with landowners for access to their property before, during and after construction; the timing of construction activities; the safety measures in place to protect our landowners, communities and the environment during construction; and compensation for fair market value for granting Enbridge use of their property.

This, at least, is reasonably accurate– although our ROW agent(s) never said one word to us about any safety measures designed to protect us, the community and the environment. And this description leaves out the most important– and most difficult– points of negotiations: compensation for damages. Construction entails cutting down people’s trees, ripping up their gardens, taking down decks, destroying septic fields and drainage tiles, tearing up fences and driveways– and much more. These things are often the sticking points in negotiations– these things along with other non-economic matters related to construction, like work hours, noise, the conduct of contractors, and the restoration process. This stuff, we can tell you from experience, is messy and contentious– far messier and far more contentious than the smiling image of Shelly Iliff and her reassuring clipboard can possibly convey.

Finally, there’s the ad’s most extraordinary sentence: “The process is based on building win-win situations by treating people fairly, transparently and with respect.” When it comes to addressing this sort of statement, frankly, we’re a little weary. So we’ll just point you to our archives where we have previously discussed Enbridge’s record on fairness and transparency and respect. And we’ll also add that we do not at all feel as though we have won anything. For us and for so many people we have met this has only been a win-win situation insofar as Enbridge has won twice.