Treating a trade association describing natural gas as “affordable energy” as fraudulent consumer marketing risks stretching the Competition Act beyond its intended purpose. Photo by Canadian Gas Association/Facebook/Postmedia

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Something has shifted in Ottawa, and it is worth pausing to notice.

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CAPE is not taking it well. Six of its members have written to the federal government demanding intervention, claiming the bureau failed to explain its decision and pointing to what they call a “concerning systemic pattern” of dropping environmental marketing investigations. Their complaint is that the watchdog is not doing what they want.

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I read it differently. From where I sit, what CAPE describes as systemic failure looks like the return of something we had lost: the reasonable-person test.

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The Competition Bureau exists to protect consumers from businesses making fraudulent claims for money. A watchdog with teeth ought to mean weary consumers can count on someone looking out for them. For the past decade, however, that mandate was stretched beyond recognition. The bureau increasingly found itself drawn into environmental policy disputes as advocacy organizations filed complaint after complaint against energy companies and industry associations. The complaints cost little to advance yet consumed years of investigative bandwidth, put their targets on the defensive and rarely addressed the sort of concrete consumer harm the Competition Act was designed to prevent.

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Consumer protection is easy to define. Does that health supplement actually work? Does that wireless plan come with hidden charges? These are the kinds of questions the Competition Act is designed to answer. Refereeing broad claims made in a public policy debate is something else entirely. A trade association describing natural gas as “affordable energy” that “burns cleaner than any other fuel” is advancing a position in a vigorous, ongoing public policy debate. Treating it as fraudulent consumer marketing risks stretching the Competition Act beyond its intended purpose.

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If the pendulum has swung back, as the pattern suggests, we should acknowledge it. Parliament has already begun retreating from the most expansive elements of the 2024 greenwashing regime, including narrowing the ability of third parties to invoke the Competition Act. The bureau’s renewed emphasis on the reasonable-person test points in the same direction.

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I say this with some personal investment. In July 2025, I joined seven other British Columbians in filing our own complaint with the Competition Bureau — but with the shoe on the other foot.