The Strike at Kaiser Permanente: California Mental Healthcare Workers Demand Parity

Cal Winslow

 December 23, 2024
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The behavioral healthcare workers in Kaiser Permanente’s vast empire of hospitals, clinics medical offices, and homecare settings are on strike today in the third month of walking picket lines in Southern California from San Diego to Bakersfield. These workers, members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), include psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, addiction medicine counselors, licensed clinical counselors, and marriage and family therapists.  They provide behavioral health care for Kaiser’s 4.8 million members. Kaiser is the biggest Health Maintenance Organization in the country. The strike began on October 21, three weeks after the workers’ contract had expired.

The extraordinary thing about this strike is that it really is a strike for patients and for the public’s health, a strike for mental health care parity, a strike in a time of acute mental healthcare crisis in this country. Perhaps never before has depression and anxiety and increasingly suicide reached into the lives of so many people and their families. This strike is about equity in behavioral health care. The strikers have told me this time and again. They insist they would rather be with their patients, not on a picket line, but they can’t keep working in a system that treats mental health workers like automatons and denies them the time and resources to provide the care they know their patients need.

Of course, there are a myriad of issues in this strike including pensions (1700 providers work without pensions) and wages and working conditions. “We want enough time to do our jobs, which means seven hours per week to prepare for appointments, devise treatment plans, provide resources, file mandated reports, go to the bathroom, and so on. We want wage increases that are equitable with our colleagues,” writes Adriana Webb, a medical social worker at Kaiser in Panorama City in Los Angeles, in the online magazine Labor Notes.

The strikers also want their patients to have timely visits: today, they complain, members (Kaiser has fee paying members it provides services for) can book in for treatment, but frequently endure waits of four weeks or longer for return appointments even though California mandates a maximum wait time of 10 business days for both initial and return visits.

Webb again: “I see first-hand how Kaiser’s mental health system is failing patients. It’s nearly impossible for them to get access to timely mental health care, and because Kaiser treats its therapists like assembly line factory workers, so many therapists get burned out and leave.” This gap today between good care and assembly line care at Kaiser is so conspicuous that the state of California recently fined Kaiser $50 million.

In Northern California NUHW professionals won a brutal open-ended strike on these issues in 2022. Workers won provisions to recruit and retrain staff, reduce wait times for patients, as well as an agreement to collaborate in transforming Kaiser’s approach to mental health care. It was a big step forward, progress “but only due to our 14-year struggle,” says Sal Rosselli, who stepped aside as president of NUHW earlier this year. Now it’s Southern California’s turn.

A win will be a giant step forward, but NUHW healthcare workers will get at best a breather; Kaiser is relentless in its determination to break this union. This is not the first strike in Southern California, it won’t be the last. Kaiser does whatever it can to undermine the agreements and is quite willing to violate contracts and pay fines. It remains committed to visits delayed and treatment denied, their bottom line coming first. Still, things are moving in the right direction and bigger giants have fallen.

The words, “delayed” and “denied,” of course, have taken on new meaning for Americans in the last weeks; they have come to express the depth of frustration, the bipartisan anger of the public with the health care system, especially with the insurance giants. The mental health strikers understand this anger only too well; every day they are in the trenches and their demands starkly reflect the public’s anger. In 2022, they produced the pathbreaking study. “Care delayed is Care denied.” The study revealed in great detail “that when treatment is significantly postponed or delayed, it essentially equates to being denied that care altogether, as the delay can potentially worsen a patient’s condition or prevent timely intervention, leading to negative health consequences.”

“Care delayed is Care denied.” gives us a taste of just how broken our medical system is today and just how wedded it is to the pursuit of profit. But never mind, it works for our 1%, and their representatives who are now taking places in the new president’s cabinet. Kaiser’s profits were $4.1 billion in 2023; it has $64 billion in the bank. Kaiser’s CEO, Greg Adams’ “compensation” was $17,268,060 in 2023.  The corporation also underwrites his ten pension plans. More than a dozen of his minions received a million or more annually. No wonder they fight so hard to keep this system. And Kaiser is only one among many healthcare behemoths reaping unimaginable financial rewards in today’s bonanza of the billionaires.

The strikers rotate pickets from hospital to hospital. They hold rallies that converge in front of Kaiser’s Pasadena Southern California’s headquarters.  They have widespread labor support. 200 RNs representing the United Nurses Associations of California/UNAC joined picket lines on the first day. The UFCW, Unite/Here and CWA have given picket line and financial support. The San Diego Federtaion of Labor sent $10,000 to the NUHW hardship fund. Nearly 400 strikers participated in a major action outside Kaiser headquarters. The event began with a food and toy distribution at the International Brother of Electrical Workers (IBEW) hall before a throng of strikers, more than a block deep, marched to Kaiser headquarters with a giant cardboard heart in tow.

The Los Angeles Federation of Labor has gone all out, including sharing their flatbed truck and their huge parade balloons, the “Scabby Rat” and the “Fat Cat.” They organized a toy drive; it is the holiday season after all. They sentthe truck, loaded with toys to the rally in Pasadena. “The second I saw the toys, I started crying,” said Jade Rosado, a Kaiser therapist with three children. “Just to be able to choose something I knew my kids would enjoy. It brought me a lot of relief.” Rosado, who was named a Kaiser “Everyday Hero” in August for helping save a patient’s life, seeing the banners for her fellow “Everyday Hero” recipients hanging inside the corporate office, noted the hypocrisy; “It just made me think that all of us are heroes, so why don’t we get the same benefits, wage increases, and patient care time as other Kaiser workers,” Rosado said. “Kaiser is profiting off our labor, but they’re not incentivizing us to stay.”

Ligia Pacheco, a Kaiser therapist, also responding to the distribution, thanked supporters, saying, “After receiving the food and toy donations, our gratitude turned into powerful chanting that reflects the solidarity we continue to have.”

The LA Federation, in addition to toys, has donated boxes of groceries to the strikers. This led, on November 15, to a confrontation outside the Los Angeles Medical Center. As the federation workers were unloading the food boxes, two “bullying” HR executives, with the LAPD in tow, insisted they couldn’t distribute the food on its property (they were on the sidewalk) and demanded they shut down the event. Most of the boxes, which included perishable items, had to be rerouted to NUHW offices in Glendale.

“It was shocking to see that, frankly, Kaiser HR is so dirty that it would deny us food after four weeks without pay,” said Kassaundra Gutierrez-Thompson, who was present at the picket line. “It’s really alarming because at the end of the day, I still work for Kaiser, and it doesn’t feel like the HR Department has my back as a Kaiser employee.”

The California chapter of the National Association of Social Workers has written to Kaiser Permanente CEO Greg Adams calling on Kaiser to “resume good faith negotiations with NUHW’s Southern California members as soon as possible, and accept the union’s reasonable contract proposals.” Mental Health America of California is also supporting the strike, as is an array of mental health advocates.

In addition to all this, a majority of California legislators has signed onto nearly identical letters calling on Kaiser Permanente CEO Greg Adams to end the strike by returning to the bargaining table and agreeing to their proposals for settlement.

The letter from Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas is signed by 40 of his fellow Assembly members, and the letter from Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire is signed by 20 of his fellow senators. The letters cite reports that Kaiser is cancelling therapy sessions at “an alarming rate” during the strike They urge Adams to “resume good faith negotiations with NUHW as soon as possible, and to agree to the union’s reasonable contract proposals in order to ensure the delivery of timely and appropriate behavioral health services to your patients.”

The solidarity, it’s been magnificent. Why, then, is Kaiser, which spends a small fortune present itself as a progressive vanguard in progressive healthcare, playing hardball with its psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, counselors, family therapists?

Jim Clifford, an elected NUHW executive Board member, a bilingual therapist in Kaiser’s southern- most clinic (“I can see Tijuana from my office”) says it’s not that complicated. Money? “They’ve spent far more money trying to break us than settling with us would cost. They pay scab therapists $13, 000 a week and there’s still a high turnover.

 “No, we’ve been a thorn in Kaiser’s side since we were first organized more than a decade ago. We’ve been the whistle blowers, the strongest advocates of providing decent mental health care and a voice for patients.

“Kaiser has fought us EVERY STEP of the way. It took us five years of fighting with them to get our first contract. That didn’t stop them, they tried to decertify us. They unilaterally took away our defined pension. They held us below the wages and benefits of the rest of the corporation. How are we supposed to get new therapists – and keep them?”

Sophia Mendoza, a veteran of southern California’s labor wars, was elected President of NUHW this last spring, replacing Rosselli, who, stepping aside, is still an active member of the union. She is confident that the union will win. “Our demands are reasonable. People want good mental health care and that’s what this is about.  Our members, their patients, the electeds, and other unions are all coming together. Our fight to restore the defined benefit pension is a fight for all of labor. This is a fight to treat those who need and to provide mental health care equitably.”

The National Union of Healthcare Workers is a member-led movement that represents 19,000 healthcare workers in California and Hawaii, including more than 4,700 Kaiser mental health professionals.

This report is based on discussions with many NUHW members and staff as well as NUHW press releases.

Cal Winslow is the author of Radical Seattle: the General Strike of 1919. He can be reached at winslow@mcn.org

U$ Political Economy Contradictions as We Lurch Into 2025

Richard D. Wolff

 December 23, 2024
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Photograph Source: Office of Speaker Mike Johnson – Public Domain

The Republicans (GOP), traditionally the U.S.’s anti-tax party, now promise to use tariffs to wage trade wars, to massively deport immigrants, and to stop drug traffic. But tariffs are simply the name of one kind of tax (on imported goods and services). So the GOP becomes both anti-tax and pro-tax. Likewise, the traditional party of minimal government, today’s GOP now favors massive subsidies to industries that big government will select as well as economic sanctions and bans on enterprises and whole countries that big government will select. Beyond the right-wing ideology and financial self-serving, Trump reflects deeper contradictions in the GOP’s evolution.

The GOP, traditionally the laissez-faire party of private enterprise, now favors increased government control of what private enterprises can and cannot offer in markets for reproductive healthcare, control medications and devices, and also for vaccines and drugs. The GOP, traditionally supporting “freedom,” now insists on blocking the free movement of people across borders and favors protectionist economic policy over a commitment to “free trade.” Some of Trump’s cabinet nominees voice traditional GOP views while others pronounce the new anti-traditional positions. Some nominees do both. Trump does not resolve the deep contradictions in the GOP’s message, thereby confusing both its messengers and its public audiences. In the moment, those contradictions give Trump some power. Amid the confusion, he decides. But soon conflicts among U.S. policies will expose the incoherence of Trump’s project and thereby sap his power.

The Democratic party was, at least since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the “progressive” party of working people, unions, and oppressed minorities. Yet the rise of the “centrists” across recent decades shifted the Democrats rightward. As they became grateful recipients of corporate and billionaires’ donations, the Democrats increasingly supported the donor class by fielding “moderate” candidates, moderating their policies and programs, and publicly marginalizing the party’s remaining progressive wing. Privately, the Democrats’ centrist leaders pleaded and maneuvered to retain the traditional support of labor unions, oppressed minorities, and educated professionals. Moderation rendered the Democrats’ pursuit of gains for their traditional supporters ever less effective. So too did Democrats’ hold on those constituencies’ electoral commitments and loyalties dissipate. Success with donors contradicted deepening failures with voters, most starkly exposed in the 2024 election.

Multiple, intense, and persistent contradictions within both parties suggest that some underlying, historic shifts may be underway. In my view, the first of those shifts is the peaking and subsequent decline in recent decades of the U.S. empire and its allies (especially the G7). This shift reflects and feeds the concurrent rise of the Global South, China, and the BRICS. A second shift is the accumulation of U.S. capitalism’s internal economic problems and difficulties. These are inadequately acknowledged, let alone solved. Chief among the problems are the long-term worsening of wealth and income inequalities and the persistent boom-bust or recession-inflation cycles for which no solution has been found.

In short, both the GOP and the Democrats have denied both shifts. Indeed, denial has so far been the parties’ shared response to the linked declines of global empire and domestic capitalism. Denial rarely solves problems. It usually enables or provokes them to worsen until they explode.

The key contradictions roiling political parties and their economic policies work parallel effects among professional economists. Unresolved, stale debates among economists react back upon policies, politicians, and public discourse to render them frustratingly powerless to fix what the public sees increasingly as a broken system. Starting with Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and the doctrine of laissez-faire and, especially since John Maynard Keynes, a huge portion of the profession has centered its work around an ongoing, seemingly endless debate. The question is whether our capitalist system is best served by minimal versus large, ongoing government interventions in its operation. Should we privilege pro-laissez-faire economics (the so-called neoclassical tradition) or governmental interventionist economics (the so-called Keynesian tradition) or some “synthesis” of both?

This debate figured prominently in U.S. university economics classes 20, 40, and 60 years ago much as it does in such classes today. The themes of that debate echoed prominently in the language of politics then and now. Occasionally, a few politicians recognized that the overdrawn oppositions, in theory, did not correspond all that well with actual practical politics. Nixon once said, “We are all Keynesian now.” Clinton boasted that he had “ended welfare as we know it.” Trump regularly excoriates Democrats as “radical left lunatics” and includes “fascists” among them. All three presidents were proved wrong, albeit quite self-assured, in making such confused and confusing statements.

Yet the centrality of the private-versus-government dispute in both economic theory and policy continues. Its social usefulness lies more in what it excludes rather than in anything positive it includes. Putting that debate at the core of economics has helped prevent alternative cores from emerging that would challenge both neoclassical and Keynesian economics. One such alternative core would question whether top-down hierarchical organizations of production (the employer-employee model) better serve societies than horizontally egalitarian, democratic organizations (the worker coop model). Debates might then focus on which organization of production better preserves the natural environment, reduces income and wealth inequalities, overcomes cyclical economic instability, or advances the physical and mental health of people.

The contradictions agitating discourses and practices these days may stem from the exhaustion of old economic and political traditions even as a new tradition is not yet clearly emerging. On the one hand, the U.S. and the UK now join Europe in turning clearly toward government-run protectionism instead of free trade. On the other, state-supervised China and India, among others, support free trade. The economic growth records of the USSR in the 20th century and of China in the 21st century undermine preferences for private over state-regulated capitalisms. The old debate yields no new light on such central economic issues these days as the rise of the BRICS bloc in the world economy relative to the declines of an already smaller G7 bloc and the U.S. dollar in world trade.

Of course, economists and politicians whose resumes mark them as leading proponents of neoclassical economics and privatization keep trying—like their Keynesian counterparts—to sustain the old debates that made them relevant. If they succeed, it will be because a still prevailing system prefers to rehash the old rather than welcome and explore what is emerging. In any case, however, relentless change will continue to work its ways on a passing U.S. empire and its capitalist system.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Richard Wolff is the author of Capitalism Hits the Fan and Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens. He is founder of Democracy at Work.

 

Israel to Annex the West Bank – Why Now? And What are the Likely Scenarios?

by Ramzy Baroud Posted onDecember   23, 2024

Israel is getting ready to annex the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The annexation will be a major step backward on the road to Palestinian freedom and will likely serve as a catalyst for a new Palestinian uprising.

Though annexation has been on the Israeli agenda for years, this time around a ‘great opportunity’ – in the words of extremist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – has presented itself and, from an Israeli point of view, cannot be missed.

“I hope we’ll have a great opportunity with the new US administration to create full normalization (of the Israeli occupation),” the minister was quoted as saying by Israeli media.

This is not the first time that Smotrich, among other Israeli extremists, has made the connection between Trump’s advent to the White House and the illegal expansion of Israel’s borders.

Two reasons make Israel’s far-right optimistic about Trump’s arrival: One, the Israeli experience during Trump’s first term in office, where the US president allowed Israel to claim sovereignty over illegal settlements, the Syrian Golan Heights, and occupied East Jerusalem; and, two, Trump’s more recent statement in the run-up to the election.

Israel is “so tiny” on the map, Trump said while addressing the pro-Israeli group ‘Stop Antisemitism’ at an event last August, wondering: “Is there any way of getting more?” The statement, absurd by any definition, caused joy among Israeli politicians, who understood it to be a green right for further annexations.

Israel’s aims for colonial expansion also received a boost in recent days. Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s rule in Syria, Israel immediately began invading large swathes of the country, reaching as far as the Quneitra governorate, less than 20 kilometers away from the capital, Damascus.

What is taking place in Syria serves as a model of what to expect in the West Bank in coming months.

Israel had occupied nearly 70 percent of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967. It cemented its illegal occupation of the Arab region by formally annexing it in 1981 through the so-called Golan Heights Law.

That illegal move came shortly after another illegal annexation, that of occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem the previous year.

Although the West Bank was not formally annexed, the boundaries of East Jerusalem expanded well beyond its historic borders, thus swallowing large parts of the West Bank.

The West Bank, like East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, are all recognized as illegally occupied territories under international law. Israel has no legal basis to maintain its occupation, let alone annexation of any Palestinian or Arab region. It is allowed to do so, however, due to US-western support and international silence.

But why is Israel keen on annexing the West Bank now?

Aside from the ‘great opportunity’ linked to Trump’s return to power, Israel feels that its ability to sustain a genocidal war on Gaza without any international intervention to bring the extermination to an end, would make the annexation of the West Bank a far less consequential matter on the international agenda.

Even though the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had issued a decisive ruling on the illegality of the Israeli occupation on July 19, followed by the issuing of arrest warrants of top Israeli leaders by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on November 21, no action was taken to hold Israel accountable. The annexation of the West Bank is unlikely to change that, especially as Israel conducts its wars and illegal actions through direct US support.

Indeed, the Democratic administration of Joe Biden has financed and supported all Israeli wars, including the current genocide. Trump is expected to be equally generous, or at least, not at all critical.

All of this in mind, the annexation of the West Bank in the coming weeks or months is a real possibility.

In fact, Smotrich had already informed “workers of the Defense Ministry body in charge of Israeli and Palestinian civil affairs in the West Bank” about his plans to “shut down the department as part of an envisioned Israeli annexation of the area,” Times of Israel reported on December 6.

While such annexation will not change the legal status of the West Bank, it will have dire consequences for the millions of Palestinians living there, as annexation is likely to be followed by a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing, if not from the whole of the West Bank, certainly from large parts of it.

Annexation will also render the Palestinian Authority legally irrelevant – as it was created following the Oslo Accords to administer parts of the West Bank in anticipation of a future sovereignty, which never actualized. Will the PA agree to remain functional as part of the Israeli military administration of a newly annexed West Bank?

Palestinians will certainly resist, as they always do. The nature of the resistance will prove critical in the success or failure of the Israeli scheme. A popular Intifada, for example, will overstretch the Israeli military, which will likely use an unprecedented degree of violence to suppress Palestinians but will unlikely succeed.

Annexing the West Bank at a time that Palestine, in fact, the whole region is in turmoil, is a recipe for perpetual war, which, from the viewpoint of Smotrich and his ilk is the actual ‘great opportunity’, as it will secure their political survival for years to come.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. His other books include My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

CANADA

Revised airline compensation rules will preserve status quo: consumer advocate

By The Canadian Press

December 23, 2024 at 11:34AM EST

Consumer advocates say proposed changes to Canada’s passenger rights charter will perpetuate loopholes that allow airlines to forego compensating travellers whose flights are disrupted.

Ottawa is proposing new rules surrounding airlines' obligations when a flight is delayed or cancelled by designating certain factors outside a carrier’s control, such as weather that could affect flight safety, as “exceptional circumstances.”

Under the amended rules, airlines are still generally not required to provide compensation for inconveniences to passengers in situations involving such factors, though there are some exceptions.

But Air Passenger Rights advocacy group president Gabor Lukacs called the weekend announcement of the proposal “deceptive” and said that Transport Canada is actually “preserving the status quo.”

He said that under the newly outlined rules, which are now open to a 75-day feedback period, around half of flight delays and more than two-thirds of cancellations would still not qualify for compensation.

Previously, Canada’s passenger rights charter — which took effect in 2019 — divided flight disruptions into three categories: those caused by factors within the carrier’s control, disruptions within the carrier’s control but required for safety purposes, and those outside the airline’s control.

Passengers had only been entitled to compensation in the first of those categories.

Lukacs said the government’s amended rules merely give a new title to the latter two categories. He called it “semantics.”

“They are just renaming the two categories when no compensation is owed as ‘exceptional circumstances,’” he said.

“If two-thirds of the flight disruptions are exceptional, it’s not very exceptional. It doesn’t really do .... what the government promised the public to do.”

The Canadian Transportation Agency has been working to amend regulations associated with the Canada Transportation Act since the Liberal government passed legislation last year aiming to tighten rules for passenger rights.

The changes appeared to scrap a loophole through which airlines have denied customers compensation for flight delays or cancellations when they were required for safety purposes.

The reforms also put the onus on airlines to show a flight disruption is caused by safety concerns or reasons outside their control.

The draft regulations published Saturday would require carriers to provide meals to passengers whose flights are delayed at least two hours, along with overnight accommodation if necessary, even in exceptional circumstances.

Ottawa said those factors would also include security threats, unscheduled airport closures, bird strikes, or aircraft damage that could affect flight safety, among other examples.

If a flight has been cancelled, or if a passenger has been bumped, the proposed amendments require the air carrier to rebook a passenger on its next available flight or that of a partner airline, also in any circumstance.

Airlines also have an obligation to rebook a passenger who has missed, or is likely to miss, a connecting flight because of an earlier flight disruption on the same itinerary.

Carriers would have to provide refunds within 15 days, down from the current deadline of 30 days, if a passenger prefers to be reimbursed rather than rebooked when their flight is cancelled, delayed at least three hours, or they are bumped from the flight.

That timeline shift is meant to better align with practices in the U.S. and the European Union, the federal agency said.

However, Lukacs said those regions actually require carriers to deliver refunds within seven days.

“Somehow the airlines managed to convince the government that miraculously, north of the border, apparently reindeers cannot deliver the refund in seven days,” he said.

“Perhaps the refunds come in a horse cart or something.”

The regulations include a $250,000 maximum fine for airline violations, marking a tenfold increase over existing penalties.

The federal agency said it estimates the proposed amendments would cost carriers around 99 cents per passenger flight annually, or around $512 million over a 10-year period after they come into effect.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 23, 2024.

Canada Competition Bureau clarifies expectations around new greenwashing rules

By The Canadian Press

December 23, 2024 

GATINEAU, Que. — The Competition Bureau released draft guidelines on Monday that aim to clarify expectations around new greenwashing rules.

The new laws that were passed in June require companies to be able to substantiate environmental claims they make.

The rules have sparked concern and confusion as to how far they go, and what businesses are able to say. Soon after the law passed, the Pathways Alliance group of oilsands companies removed all content from its website and social media feeds, citing uncertainty over the rules.

The concerns led the bureau to accelerate its release of the guidance that it’s now seeking feedback on until Feb. 28, 2025.

The guidelines give both guidance on the environmental side of existing rules, as well as details on the new law, noting in all cases, the rules only apply where the purpose of the claim is the promotion of a product or business interest.

The bureau warns that overall, it will have to see how the courts interpret many of the concepts in the new law, but in the meantime it will rely on the “ordinary meaning” of the words used.

For businesses that make claims about the environmental benefits of a product, the bureau says it will have to establish that the company publicly made the claims for promotional purposes, but then it will be up to the company to prove the claims were based on adequate and proper testing.

Similarly, the bureau will have to prove that a company made public claims to promote a product or business interest, such as that it’s on track to reach net-zero emissions, but it will be up to the business to prove the claim was based on adequate and proper substantiation in accordance with internationally recognized methodology.

It gives the example of a company that’s claimed it’s on its way to being net zero by 2050, but that it didn’t take steps to substantiate the claim, and didn’t develop a “concrete” plan to mitigate its emissions.

“In this scenario, the claim would likely be considered by the bureau to be a representation with respect to the environmental benefit of a business that is not based on adequate and proper substantiation.”

In the example, the company is specifically claiming it is achieving its target, while many companies have simply set net-zero targets.

The bureau however also said claims about the future can be considered greenwashing if they represent little more than wishful thinking. It said businesses should both understand what needs to be achieved and have a concrete, realistic and verifiable plan to accomplish the target before making a claim.

It notes that on the issue of what it considers “internationally recognized methodology,” a key question raised by businesses, it says the method would likely meet expectations if it is recognized by at least two countries.

The bureau said it won’t seek to hold anyone liable for a breach of the new law that happened before it came into force. It said it would also consider the circumstance of each case when exercising its enforcement discretion.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 23, 2024.