According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the Competition Bureau (CB) anti-trust lawyers suggested that Parliament widen the definition of misleading advertising in the Competition Act.. Supreme Court of Canada .A CB report, The Future Of Competition Policy In Canada, recommends the change after a 2012 Supreme Court decision that advertising which creates a false “general impression” is improper..“The act should be revised,” said the report..Current law “has yet to prescribe a consumer standard for deceptive marketing conduct.”.“The matter has been left to the courts to adjudicate,” said the report..“This has resulted in a lack of consensus.”.The CB said Parliament should write into legislation the landmark Supreme Court ruling on deceptive advertising, Jean-Marc Richard v. Time Inc. The decision involved a magazine promotion..“In the case of false or misleading advertising, the general impression is the one a person has after an initial contact with the entire advertisement as it related to both the layout of the advertisement and the meaning of the words used,” wrote the Supreme Court..The judges added the finding of deceptive advertising “does not involve the minute dissection of the text to determine whether the general impression it conveys is false or misleading.”.“The courts must not approach a written advertisement as if it were a commercial contract by reading it several times, going over every detail to make sure they understand all its subtleties,” wrote the Court..“Reading the entire text once should be sufficient.”.In the Richard case, a Québec homeowner sued after receiving a form letter in 1999 from Time magazine suggesting he had won a large cash prize but could only claim it by purchasing a two-year subscription..The Supreme Court noted that the letter had “exclamatory sentences in bold uppercase letters whose purpose was to catch the reader’s attention” and was signed by a “director of sweepstakes.”.“OUR SWEEPSTAKES RESULTS ARE NOW FINAL: MR. JEAN-MARC RICHARD HAS WON A CASH PRICE OF $833,337!” read the letter marked as an official notification. “YOU WILL FORFEIT THE ENTIRE $833,337 IF YOU FAIL TO RESPOND TO THIS NOTICE!”. CashCash .Richard replied but never received a cheque. He testified that on calling Time headquarters in New York to speak with the sweepstakes director, he was advised the person did not exist and that the mail-out was a promotional gimmick..The Supreme Court considered the “promotional gimmick” a clear breach of Québec’s Consumer Protection Act..“In this case, the average consumer, after reading the document, would have been under the general impression that Richard held the winning entry and had only to return the reply coupon to initiate the claim process,” wrote judges..“The document’s strange collection of affirmations and restrictions was not clear or intelligible enough to dispel the general impression conveyed by the most prominent sentences.”
