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The Competition Bureau's guidelines identify several provisions relevant to environmental claims. Paragraph 74.01(1)(a) covers representations that are false or misleading in a material respect. Paragraph 74.01(1)(b) requires performance claims about products to be based on adequate and proper testing. The two newer provisions, paragraphs 74.01(1)(b.1) and 74.01(1)(b.2), address environmental claims directly: the first requires claims about a product's environmental benefits to be based on adequate and proper testing, and the second requires claims about the environmental benefits of a business or business activity to be based on adequate and proper substantiation in accordance with an internationally recognised methodology.

Two points from the guidelines matter commercially. On methodology, the Bureau will consider a methodology internationally recognised where it is recognised in two or more countries, which can come from standards bodies, regulatory authorities or commonly accepted international practice. On timing, testing or substantiation is expected to exist before the claim is made. The Bureau also states that businesses never have to prove that their environmental claims are not false or misleading, but once it is established that a claim was made, the business is the one that has to show the testing or substantiation behind it.

The Bureau's practical guidance for businesses is short and worth repeating to whoever writes your copy: claims should be truthful and not misleading; adequately and properly tested or substantiated where required; specific about what is being compared; not exaggerated; and where they concern future goals, based on concrete, realistic and verifiable plans. The guidelines set out the Bureau's enforcement approach rather than binding law, so treat compliance advice on a specific claim as a matter for your own counsel.

A reporting framework tells you what to disclose. The Canadian Sustainability Standards Board issued Canada's first sustainability disclosure standards in December 2024: CSDS 1, covering general requirements for disclosing sustainability-related financial information, and CSDS 2, covering climate-related disclosures. They are based on the International Sustainability Standards Board's IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 with modifications for the Canadian context, and are effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2025. The standards themselves are voluntary unless an authority such as a securities regulator requires them, so establish what actually applies to your organisation before adopting a reporting programme designed for a public issuer.

A building certification attests to something narrower and more concrete. LEED is administered in Canada by the Canada Green Building Council, which handles certification and verification, and covers rating systems for new construction and major renovations, interior fit-outs, existing buildings in operation, homes, neighbourhoods and communities, with certification awarded at levels from Certified through Silver and Gold to Platinum based on points achieved. BOMA BEST, administered by BOMA Canada, assesses existing buildings through a Sustainable stream focused on environmental performance and a Smart stream focused on building technology, with achievement tiers from Baseline through Bronze, Silver and Gold to Platinum.

The distinction matters when it reaches your website. A certification supports a specific, checkable statement about a building that earned it. It does not support a general claim about the environmental benefits of your whole business, which is precisely the kind of representation the newer Competition Act provisions address.

Sustainability reporting is a recurring obligation dressed up as a project. The methodology, the boundaries of what you counted and the source data need to be documented well enough that a different person can reproduce last year's number, because comparability is the point of reporting against a framework at all. Insist that the working files, not only the finished report, belong to you at the end of the engagement.

Claims need the same maintenance. A statement that was properly substantiated when it was made can drift out of date as operations, suppliers or products change, and it usually stays on the website long after the evidence stopped matching it. Keep a simple register of every public environmental claim, what substantiates it and when that evidence was last checked, and review it whenever the underlying activity changes. That register is also the fastest way to answer a customer, a regulator or a journalist without improvising.

Scope is driven by how good your data already is. An organisation with metered energy data and organised procurement records needs far less groundwork than one reconstructing a year from invoices, and the number of sites, the complexity of the supply chain and whether a third party will review the result all move the work. Certification support is usually scoped against a specific rating system and building, while claim substantiation is scoped against the specific claims you want to make. Be wary of a proposal that prices a reporting programme before anyone has looked at where your data currently lives.

On LokalMatch you set out what prompted the work, the size and type of your operation, whether a customer or regulator is driving the deadline and what you intend to publish, and sustainability consultants working in your area respond to you directly. LokalMatch does not audit, certify, verify or endorse anyone, and it takes no position on the claims a consultant helps you make; consultants pay for the requests they receive, so comparing several costs the business nothing. Ask each one who owns the data and the methodology at the end, and how they would substantiate anything you plan to say publicly.