Julien O. Beaulieu is a doctoral candidate at Imperial College London. Wren Montgomery is an associate professor at Ivey Business School at Western University. Jennifer A. Quaid is a professor in the civil law section of the University of Ottawa.

In the 2025 budget, the federal government announced it plans to make changes to new rules added to the Competition Act last year – rules that gave Canadians a private right of action against deceptive marketing and required companies to substantiate their environmental claims.

The move, which follows intense pushback from lobby groups, is being framed as necessary to reduce “investment uncertainty.” In the government’s words, the so-called “greenwashing provisions” are “having the opposite of the desired effect, with some parties slowing or reversing efforts to protect the environment.”

That justification doesn’t add up.

For one, how exactly does Ottawa know that companies are reversing their environmental efforts because of these provisions? All we have seen so far is widely publicized removals of previously made environmental claims. There’s a big difference........

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