Company pleads guilty to three charges and pays a fine

OTTAWA, December 15, 2000 — The Competition Bureau announced today that Gaston Charbonneau Floral Ltd. pleaded guilty to three charges of false or misleading representation on the quantity of their products. The Quebec court imposed a $1000 fine for each charge, a total of $3000, under the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act. The 3080 misleading compost bags were confiscated.

Last June, the Bureau started a detailed inspection of the packaged goods produced by Gaston Charbonneau Floral Ltd. to verify the net quantity. These inspections enabled the Bureau to find that the bags of sheep manure compost and cattle manure compost did not hold the same amount of net quantity that had been labelled on the package. In actuality, the bags contained a lower quantity of compost than what was indicated. The company gave misleading information to the consumer who ended up paying for a quantity that they did not receive.

"A false declaration about the quality or the weight of a product is a deception that the consumers are not able to notice right away. Deceptions, such as this one, make the consumers lose money," declared Johanne D'Auray, Deputy Commissioner of the Fair Business Practices Branch.

For more information, please contact:

Julie Hébert
Senior Communication Advisor
Communications Directorate
819-953-4257