BC Greens table anti-greenwashing bill

A bill to prevent climate-polluting companies from greenwashing their products was tabled Tuesday by the BC Green Party leader.

The law proposed by Sonia Furstenau would prevent businesses from advertising misleading statements about greenhouse gas emissions associated with their practices. It would also target claims about the effectiveness of their climate efforts and require them to back their sustainability claims on a public website.

Corporations that fail to adhere to the measures could face fines of up to $1 million per day if the false representation continues to be published publicly.

"The point we're trying to make with the proposed bill is that fossil fuels are costing us enormously," said Furstenau, citing the soaring costs and health impacts associated with climate disasters like floods and drought. "The inclusion of the financial penalties is really to speak to the cost that this industry — and ultimately, that the advertising industry — is having."

The proposed bill could make B.C. the latest front in a growing effort to stop fossil fuel companies from deceiving Canadians about their products' harmful impact on the climate.

In February, the federal NDP tabled a similar bill — and received vicious reprisals. In March, a coalition of B.C. residents and environmental groups sued gas utility FortisBC for allegedly misleading consumers about the climate impacts of its fuel. The federal competition bureau is also investigating the Pathways Alliance, a coalition of Canada's six largest oil and gas producers, for greenwashing their fossil fuel products.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in 2022 that "[r]hetoric and misinformation on climate change and the deliberate undermining of science" about climate-related issues by "status quo interests" have "contributed to misperceptions of the scientific consensus, uncertainty, disregarded risk and urgency, and dissent.”

The bill "is a way to put [greenwashing] on the political agenda to generate conversation" about the issue, Furstenau said.

"Tabling this legislation is to call the government to account for being so passive in the face of fossil fuel advertising and being passive in not protecting the public from false information."