Ottawa is having trouble keeping up-to-date on false net zero claims by businesses, with senators hearing current law must be expanded to deal with fake “green” advertising.Federal anti-trust lawyers are tracking more complaints of false environmental claims than ever before, Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell wrote in a letter to the Senate National Finance Committee, obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter. “A significant portion of the greenwashing complaints the Competition Bureau receives do not involve claims about products but rather more general or forward looking environmental claims about a business or brand as a whole, e.g. claims about being ‘net zero’ or ‘carbon neutral by 2030,’” Boswell wrote senators. “These more general claims to promote a business interest can also be false or misleading and may be captured by our general deceptive market provisions,” wrote Boswell. “However these claims are not reverse onus and it can be challenging for the Bureau to prove they are false or misleading in a material respect.”Bill C-59 An Act To Implement Certain Provisions Of The Fall Economic Statement rewrites the Competition Act to restrict false environmental claims. Clause 236.1 of the bill would ban any “statement, warranty or guarantee of a product’s benefits for protecting the environment or mitigating the environmental and ecological effects of climate change that is not based on an adequate and proper test, the proof of which lies on the person making the representation.”Commissioner Boswell said the amendment “may prove to be a limited change” since it applied only to products. The clause did nothing to address broader misrepresentations.“While these more general claims may not be amenable to ‘testing’ product performance claims, business should at least be able to substantiate them if challenged,” he wrote. This is not the first problem the Competition Bureau has had with complaints to do with the green agenda. In 2003, Ontario Power Generation claimed its emissions had dropped 60% in 16 years after environmentalists complained to the bureau — but Ontario Clean Air Alliance said actually it was close to 9%. More recently in 2022, coffee mogul Keurig Canada agreed to pay $3.9 million in damages after it claimed its polypropylene coffee pods were recyclable in most provinces. They were not. “Portraying products or services as having more environmental benefits than they truly have is an illegal practice in Canada,” Commissioner Boswell said at the time. “False or misleading claims by businesses to promote ‘greener’ products harm consumers.”The Competition Bureau in a guide titled Environmental Claims And Greenwashing said the “increased demand for green products” in Canada appeared to correspond with “an increase of false or misleading environmental ads or claims also known as greenwashing.”
