Lawyer Matt Hulse would have preferred more practical advice from law enforcement agency
A lawyer at Ecojustice, an environmental law charity, has said that Competition Bureau Canada’s final guidelines for Canadian businesses to make environmental claims complying with the Competition Act, 1985’s anti-greenwashing provisions could be more detailed and practical.
Matt Hulse, Ecojustice lawyer, expressed disappointment in the independent law enforcement agency’s insufficiency in detail and practical advice, which could have helped companies comprehend how to meet their legal obligations when making environmental claims, according to a press release from Ecojustice.
Leah Temper, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment’s health and economic policy program director, added that the final guidelines were not as helpful as their counterparts in the UK, Australia, and other jurisdictions.
“Nevertheless, the law is clear that false and misleading claims are prohibited and that businesses must be able to substantiate their claims,” Hulse said in the press release.
Temper noted that the new guidelines clarified that organizations could make whatever environmental claims they wanted, provided they were true and provable.
“The guidance reiterates that companies will not be punished when they do their due diligence, which should end the unfounded ‘greenhushing’ claims that big polluters and their enablers have been weaponizing to avoid accountability,” Temper said in the press release.
Last year’s amendments to the Competition Act “already appear to be weeding out greenwashing, but the federal government must continue to enact legislation and policy that mandate transparency and accountability from Canada’s biggest polluters — as well as the financial institutions that enable them,” Hulse said.
“Nine out of 10 Canadians support penalties for greenwashing and we expect that the Act will continue to weed out the bad actors from the good, thereby protecting consumers’ health, wallets and future,” Temper added.
Tanya Jemec, an Ecojustice finance lawyer, said businesses should examine their green advertisements closely to ensure compliance with the legal requirements.
“To be clear, the anti-greenwashing provisions do not provide an excuse to backpedal away from climate commitments, but rather help ensure that consumers are not being duped by green advertising that is meaningless, or is based on a skewed standard that a company has created just for itself,” Jemec said in Ecojustice’s press release.
On June 5, the Competition Bureau announced that it had finalized its guidelines regarding environmental claims. In a news release, the Bureau explained that these guidelines seek to promote compliance with the Competition Act, including the new greenwashing provisions, introduced via a series of amendments that passed into law on June 20, 2024.
The Bureau said the final guidelines aim to help companies make environmental claims that are neither false nor misleading and sufficiently and properly test or substantiate their claims where required.
In its news release, the Bureau asked businesses to review the guidelines before making environmental claims. The Bureau noted that its new guidelines reflected insights from over 400 submissions accepted across two rounds of public consultations conducted this past year.
