A year ago in this space, we dove into the regulation of consumer product and packaging quality through an environmental lens. In line with consumer demand for increased transparency in relation to the environmental impact of the goods that they purchase, most provinces have moved forward with extended producer responsibility (EPR) regimes to impose end-of-life management obligations on producers of consumer paper and plastic packaging. However, at the federal level, further development of regulations targeting plastics and other allegedly toxic substances appears to be paused, likely pending a decision from the Federal Court of Appeal in the Responsible Plastic Use Coalition’s challenge of the validity of the designation of plastic manufactured items as a toxic substance and the outcomes of mandatory per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and plastic reporting notices.

In the meantime, Canadian authorities responsible for consumer product safety, compliance and the environment have leveraged existing regulatory tools in ways that we expect will continue to trend in 2025: 

1. Application of legislative schemes to online marketplaces: Regulators have indicated that by integrating and displaying products from third-party sellers (3P Products) in one marketplace, marketplace facilitators are effectively sharing their brand reputation with sellers of 3P Products and facilitating the sale of 3P Products. In response, regulators are extending prohibitions against the sale of non-compliant products to marketplace facilitators where sell includes “expose for sale” under existing legislation such as the Food and Drugs Act. The risk of enforcement is higher where such products present a risk to health and safety. Newer regulatory instruments explicitly target online “marketplace facilitators” such as the Federal Plastics Registry under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, (CEPA) and under various provincial EPR regimes. As such, we will be watching closely the extent to which Canadian regulatory authorities across the board are prepared to regulate online and other novel marketplaces.
2. Increased scrutiny of deceptive marketing practices, particularly greenwashing: In June 2024, Parliament amended the deceptive marketing provisions of the Competition Act to explicitly target unsubstantiated claims about the environmental benefits of a product or business or business activity, e. greenwashing. The Competition Bureau’s draft guidance on Environmental claims and the Competition Act, published in December 2024, highlights common claims that may attract scrutiny, such as vague claims (e.g., “sustainable”), aspirational claims (e.g., “XX business will be carbon neutral by 2050”) and compositional claims about products and packaging (e.g., “100% recyclable”).
3. Increased post-market scrutiny of targeted health and safety claims: Health Canada is working to improve consumer awareness regarding the health and safety of certain food and health products through labelling changes and post-market enforcement initiatives including post-market compliance monitoring and enforcement of Natural Health Products (NHPs), labelling requirements for supplemented foods, front-of-pack labelling requirements and the new Biocides regulatory regime. We expect Health Canada to issue public advisories and recall notices focused on mislabelled and unauthorized cosmetics, NHPs, supplemented foods, biocides and health products sold by online retailers, prioritizing goods affected by the regulatory changes discussed above.¹
4. Failure to comply with mandatory information gathering initiatives: In the face of ongoing jurisdictional and legal challenges, it is likely that ECCC will increasingly rely on requests for information initiatives to (a) gather evidence to support the ‘toxicity’ of targeted substances and (b) informally ‘regulate’ the composition of consumer products where jurisdictional limitations preclude the formal regulation of certain substances. With reporting deadlines for the PFAS Notice and the Federal Plastics Registry on the horizon in 2025, we can expect ECCC to ramp up enforcement in this area to ensure information gathering initiatives have teeth going forward.
5. Notices of Violations and Higher Penalties in relation to non-compliance: Canadian regulators are showing a willingness to issue larger Administrative Monetary Penalties (“AMPs”) and are seeking maximum penalties as a deterrent to non-compliance. For example,
• Provincial EPR Regimes: In Ontario, the Resource Productivity & Recovery Authority issued continuing violations (separate AMPs for each day of non-compliance) and sought the recovery of economic benefits derived from non-compliance from three non-compliant “producers” under the Blue Box Regulation. For example, Casper Sleep Inc. was fined a total of CA$340,457.04 for alleged and continuing non-compliance between July 1 and December 31, 2023.²
• Competition Act: In 2022, Parliament increased the maximum penalties for deceptive marketing to “prevent the constraint of an artificial cap where a higher amount may be needed to ensure compliance rather than absorption as a cost of business."³ In fall 2024, the Competition Tribunal found that Cineplex Inc. engaged in reviewable conduct (drip pricing) and issued the company an AMP of CA$38, 978, 800 – the amount equivalent to that collected from consumers from the introduction of the impugned online booking fees from June 15, 2022, and December 31, 2023. In the wake of the draft guidance, we can expect the Competition Bureau to continue to leverage these new enforcement tools in relation to greenwashing in 2025.
• CEPA: Similarly, the ECCC engaged in review of AMP process to evaluate and ultimately increase the maximum AMP amounts for contraventions of environmental protection regimes. Until such an increase, ECCC may seek maximum fines via prosecution, as it did in March 2024 when Marcelle Groupe Inc was fined CA$500,000 for the failure to comply with Significant New Activity reporting regarding the use of PFAS in cosmetic products.

Electoral campaigns at both the federal and provincial levels in the coming year will bring legislative activity to a standstill, but that does not mean that enforcement activity will. While we continue to watch and wait to see how environmental regulation of the consumer product industry will take shape following a decision in the Responsible Plastic Use Coalition’s case, we can expect regulators to devote their energies to enforcing rules that have come online in the last several years.

For more information on this topic, please reach out to the authors, Monica Song, Yulia Konarski and Emma Fillman.

This article is part of the Dentons' Canadian Regulatory Trends to Watch in 2025 series. To read other articles in series, click here.

Stay up-to-date with all insights and guidance from our regulatory team by visiting our Canada Regulatory Review blog.

1. Cosmetics: Public Advisory re unauthorized skin lightening and treatment products and Recall of Volumizing Hairspray (there were several hairspray recalls for similar labelling mishaps); NHPs and SF: workout supplements, dietary supplements, and sexual enhancement products; Online: Public Advisory re: UU Zone, Unauthorized injectable drugs↩
2. See RPRA Compliance Orders and Administrative Penalties; Administrative Penalty Order RPRA-0010, Casper Sleep Inc, 30 September, 2024 (at the time of writing, the order is pending appeal by Casper Sleep Inc.). .↩
3. ISED, Future of Competition Policy in Canada, p 50.↩