The short answer
Your website copy is advertising under the Competition Act. Claims are judged by the general impression they create, not only their literal wording. Performance claims need adequate and proper testing before you publish. Sale-price and testimonial claims have their own rules. Unsupported superlatives are the usual problem.
Almost no small business owner sits down to write a homepage and thinks of it as regulated advertising. It feels like describing yourself. But the federal statute that governs misleading advertising in Canada does not care about the medium or the budget. It reaches any representation made to the public for the purpose of promoting a product or a business interest, by any means whatever [1]. A website is a means whatever. So is a Google Business profile, a Facebook post and the text in an email newsletter.
This is not a reason to panic or to hire a lawyer to review your About page. The rules are narrower and more sensible than the word "regulated" makes them sound, and the single most common problem on small-business sites is also the easiest to fix. Here is what the law actually says.
Two tracks, one subject
The Competition Act handles misleading advertising twice over [2]. Section 52 is the criminal provision: no person shall, for the purpose of promoting a product or any business interest, by any means whatever, knowingly or recklessly make a representation to the public that is false or misleading in a material respect [1]. Conviction can bring a fine at the court's discretion on indictment, or up to $200,000 and a year on summary conviction [1].
Part VII.1 of the same Act handles the same behaviour as civil "reviewable conduct". Paragraph 74.01(1)(a) mirrors section 52 without the knowingly-or-recklessly wording [1]. This is the track that matters to an ordinary business. It is enforced by the Competition Bureau, which describes itself as an independent law enforcement agency protecting and promoting competition for consumers and businesses [5]. Where a court finds reviewable conduct it can order you to stop for up to ten years, to publish a notice telling the affected public what you did, and to pay an administrative monetary penalty of up to the greater of $750,000 for an individual, or $10 million for a corporation, and three times the benefit derived from the conduct [1]. Those are ceilings for serious campaigns, not the going rate for a clumsy tagline. And no such order can be made against a person who establishes that they exercised due diligence to prevent the conduct [1].
One detail worth absorbing: on the civil track it is not necessary to establish that any person was actually deceived or misled [1]. "Nobody complained" and "nobody was harmed" are not defences to the claim itself.
The general impression test
This is the rule that catches honest people. The Act states, in provision after provision, that the general impression conveyed by a representation as well as its literal meaning shall be taken into account in deciding whether it is false or misleading [1]. It appears in section 52(4) for the criminal offence, in section 52.01(5) for electronic messages, and in section 74.03(5) for the civil provisions [1].
The consequence is that parsing your own sentence and confirming each word is defensible does not settle anything. The Competition Bureau's own guidance gives the failure patterns [3]. A message that is partly true and partly false. A message with two possible meanings, one of them false. A message that is literally true but leaves out essential information that would likely influence what a consumer does - the Bureau's example is a free trial that quietly locks you into a monthly fee unless you return the samples in time [3]. A message that is technically true but creates a false impression anyway, such as making insignificant test results sound significant. And copy that is true while the photo beside it shows something else entirely [3].
That last one is worth a specific warning for websites. Stock photography is where small sites most often drift from the truth without anyone deciding to lie. A photo of a large team, a fleet of trucks, or a storefront you do not have sits next to accurate text and quietly makes a claim of its own. If a visitor would reasonably read the image as a picture of your business, it needs to be one.
Performance claims need the test done first
This provision surprises people. Paragraph 74.01(1)(b) makes it reviewable conduct to make a representation to the public in the form of a statement, warranty or guarantee of the performance, efficacy or length of life of a product that is not based on an adequate and proper test - and the Act adds that the proof of that test lies on the person making the representation [1].
Two things follow. First, the testing has to exist before the claim goes up. There is no version of this where you publish "lasts twice as long" and gather evidence if challenged. Second, the burden is reversed. In most disputes the person making the accusation carries the proof; here you carry it. The Bureau's compliance material for businesses treats substantiation of performance claims as a standing theme rather than an edge case [6].
Parallel provisions extend the same logic to environmental claims: representations about a product's benefits for protecting or restoring the environment must be based on an adequate and proper test, and representations about a business or business activity's environmental benefits must be based on adequate and proper substantiation, with the proof on the maker in both cases [1]. If your site says the business is carbon neutral or eco-friendly, that is a claim requiring backing, not a mood.
"Was $200, now $99" has its own rules
Ordinary-price claims are governed by subsections 74.01(2) and (3) [1]. When you advertise against a reference price - "regular price", "was", "compare at", a struck-through number - you are representing the price at which the product is ordinarily supplied, and the Act sets two tests. Either a substantial volume was sold at that price or higher within a reasonable period of time, or the product was offered at that price or higher in good faith for a substantial period of time [1]. Subsection (2) applies the test to suppliers generally in the relevant geographic market; subsection (3) applies it to your own prices, and there the Act puts the burden on you to establish one of the two branches [1].
A reference price you invented so the sale price would look better fails both branches. So does a price briefly posted with no intention of selling anything at it - that is what "in good faith" is doing in the text. There is a saving provision for a person who establishes that in the circumstances the price representation is not false or misleading in a material respect [1], but it is not something to build your pricing page around.
Testimonials and reviews
Section 74.02 covers both test results and testimonials. Publishing a testimonial about a product is reviewable conduct unless you can establish that it was previously made or published by the person who gave it, or that it was approved and permission to publish was given in writing before publication - and that what you publish accords with what was given [1].
Practically, this means three habits. Get written permission, even a one-line email reply, before a customer quote goes on the site. Do not edit a testimonial into something the customer did not say - the requirement that it accord with what was approved is doing real work. And do not write reviews for yourself or have staff write them, which is straightforwardly a false representation to the public [1].
The Act also has provisions aimed specifically at electronic messages. Sections 52.01 and 74.011 make it an offence, and separately reviewable conduct, to send false or misleading representations in the sender information or subject matter information of an electronic message, or in a locator [1]. In plain terms: your newsletter's From line and subject line are regulated too, and so are misleading URLs.
The practical problem on most small-business sites
Almost none of the above is what actually appears on a typical small-business homepage. What appears is a row of unsupported superlatives. The best in New Brunswick. Guaranteed results. #1 rated. Award-winning. Trusted by thousands. Fastest service in the region.
These are exactly the phrases that carry risk, because each one is a claim a reader takes as factual. "#1 rated" implies a rating exists. "Guaranteed results" reads as a guarantee of performance - the language paragraph 74.01(1)(b) is written about [1]. "Trusted by thousands" implies a number. If the ratings, guarantee and number exist, name them: cite the rating, state the guarantee terms, give the real customer count. Specific beats superlative every time.
And if they do not exist, cut the line. This is the rare compliance step that improves the product. "The best plumber in Moncton" is a sentence every plumber's website already contains, so it persuades nobody. "Same-day service on burst pipes, seven days a week, from a licensed journeyman with 14 years in Moncton" is unarguable, more useful to a reader, and more useful to a search engine or AI assistant trying to work out what you actually do. The compliance win is a side effect of writing better copy.
Where you honestly do not need to worry
Obvious, unmeasurable puffery is not the target. Nobody is coming for "we love what we do" or "great coffee". The Bureau's deceptive marketing material is aimed at claims that mislead in a material respect - claims that could change what a consumer decides to buy [4]. A sentence with no factual content cannot mislead materially; it just wastes space.
You also do not need a legal review of your site, a disclaimer wall, or an "as seen in" strip you cannot support. Most small sites need one editing pass, not a compliance program. And plain, accurate description of what you sell, to whom, where and for how much is not a legal exposure at all - it is the part of the page that converts.
Do this this week
Open your homepage and services pages and highlight every sentence containing a superlative, a number, a guarantee, a comparison or a struck-through price. For each one, ask a single question: could I hand someone the evidence for this today? If yes, add the evidence to the page - the certification, the date, the actual figure. If no, delete the sentence and replace it with a concrete fact you can prove. Then check your testimonials and confirm you have written permission on file for each one. An hour of that will leave your site both safer and more convincing than it was this morning.