Finance committee  Second, this lowers competition, as we know, for companies that are genuinely green. They can no longer compete in the marketplace and they end up closing. This undermines the transition to a green economy. Third—

Finance committee  Yes, we've drawn a lot of similarities with how oil and gas companies have been covering up and denying climate change. We know they had knowledge of climate change since the 1950s. Of course, this is the same way that tobacco companies had been marketing and pushing cigarettes a

Finance committee  I'm sorry. I don't exactly understand the question. I would be of the opinion, on what we can achieve under clause 236.... I urge you all to strengthen it as much as you can within your capacity, but I do believe that complementary actions are needed, if that is the question. In

Finance committee  I don't have all of the polls in front of me, but the practice is extremely widespread in terms of the number of companies that are now making green claims. We actually see that this is highly concentrated in sectors that are some of the most polluting. There was a study, an ana

Finance committee  Yes. The harms of greenwashing are really substantial. As I mentioned, they're very different from other misleading and deceptive claims. You know that if you buy a product such as a razor, and they say it's going to last, if it doesn't last or it doesn't work well, obviously i

Finance committee  There's a list of practices. You cannot use offsets to make claims of carbon neutrality. No generic terms or claims to carbon neutrality and net zero are permitted, and and so on. One interesting example I would like to highlight is the case of Norway, which actually has a speci

Finance committee  Of course I would be in favour of all evidence for claims being available to consumers. However, for future and forward-looking claims, I would actually be in favour of those being considered misleading in all circumstances. Companies can clearly state what they are doing in the

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. Yes, I'm happy to talk about examples from around the world. There is quite a lot happening. The U.S. and of course the U.K. both have very comprehensive green guides. In the U.S. I believe they're called the Green Guides. The Federal Trade Commissio

Finance committee  Okay, that's great, because there are lots of examples. If we move over to Europe, they recently have two directives that attack the issue of greenwashing. One is called the “green claims directive” and the other one is called “empowering consumers for the green transition”. The

Finance committee  This is why I'm asking you to strengthen clause 236 to the best of your ability and to send a clear message that such deception, which harms us all, will no longer be tolerated.

Finance committee  Thank you. Thank you very much to the Standing Committee on Finance for inviting me to appear today as a witness. My name is Dr. Leah Temper. I'm the health and economic policy program director at the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. I also hold a Ph.D. i