CANADA Law and Practice Contributed by: Martha Harrison, Nikiforos Latrou, Eugenia (Evie) Bouras and Marissa Caldwell, McCarthy Tétrault
standard that restricts advertising of food and bever - age products to children under 13 unless those prod - ucts meet specific nutritional criteria. The Code recog - nises children as a vulnerable audience and requires advertisers to carefully consider how their messaging may impact young viewers. Adopted in 2023 and currently proceeding through parliament, Bill C-252 is a key legislative develop - ment. It aims to restrict the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to children under 13, particularly in digital and broadcast media. The bill is part of Health Canada’s Healthy Eating Strategy and is designed to reduce children’s exposure to advertising that pro - motes products high in sodium, sugars and saturated fats. While the bill does not target distributors such as internet service providers, it does empower regulators to act against advertisers, including foreign entities whose ads reach Canadian children. 3.3 Dark Patterns Currently, Canada has not enacted a specific act or statute for dark patterns. However, dark patterns could amount to a violation of the federal Competi - tion Act under Section 74.01 if the dark pattern cre - ates a materially false or misleading representation. Some examples of dark patterns that could be false or misleading are countdown timer clocks or low-inven - tory-stocks alerts that are not accurate, or where the promotion associated with each continues past the end time or stock amount. Recent enforcement actions and investigations signal that the Competition Bureau is actively scrutinising these practices, particularly in the context of e-com - TDG was found to have used false urgency cues, including countdown timers and misleading sale end dates. For example, promotions labelled “40% OFF (Sale ends 19 Sep 2022)” remained active beyond the stated deadline. TDG also inflated regular prices to exaggerate discounts. The Competition Bureau deemed these representations materially misleading and imposed a CAD3.25 million penalty, along with a CAD100,000 cost award. TDG entered into a ten-year merce and digital advertising, as follows. The Dufresne Group (TDG) Case (2023)
consent agreement and committed to a corporate compliance programme. Investigation Into The Brick and Leon’s The Competition Bureau has launched an ongoing investigation into similar practices at The Brick and Leon’s, including countdown timers, limited-time offers, and inflated regular prices. While Canada lacks a dedicated dark patterns statute, the Competition Act’s deceptive marketing provisions offer a flexible and increasingly assertive enforcement tool. 3.4 Sponsor Identification and Branded Content As discussed in 2.7 Disclosures , under the Competi - tion Act, any form of advertising – including influencer content – must disclose material connections between the promoter and the brand. This includes payments, free products, discounts, commissions or any other benefit provided in exchange for promotion. Failure to disclose such relationships can be considered decep - tive marketing and may lead to enforcement actions by the Competition Bureau. The Code reinforces these requirements. Clause 2 of the Code prohibits disguised advertising techniques, meaning that promotional content must be clearly identified as such. Clause 1 requires accuracy and clarity, and Clause 7 mandates that testimonials be genuine and based on actual experience. Non-com - pliance with these provisions of the Code can lead to consumer complaints to Ad Standards. 3.5 Special Rules for Native Advertising Under the Competition Act, “native advertising” must not be misleading. If the promotional nature of the content is not clearly disclosed, it may be consid - ered a deceptive marketing practice. Similar to native advertising, the Competition Bureau did enforce against a major telecommunications provider for “astro-turfing” – specifically, misleading representa - tions after employees posted positive app reviews without disclosing their affiliation. These reviews, which appeared on iTunes and Google Play, created a false impression of independent consumer endorse - ment. The Competition Bureau found that this violated
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