The Canadian Bar Association’s Competition Law Section held its Fall Online Symposium last week (October 20-22). Dozens of panelists, both from the public and private sector, addressed a variety of  exciting issues connected to competition law and foreign investment enforcement in the time of COVID-19. Some of the highlights of the Symposium were the key…

Canada’s Competition Bureau (the “Bureau”) recently signed a new competition enforcement agreement, the Multilateral Mutual Assistance and Cooperation Framework for Competition Authorities (“MMAC”), with competition authorities in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.  The MMAC is intended to improve the Bureau’s ability to cooperate with its counterparts in cross-border investigations, competition policy development, competition advocacy and outreach, inter-organizational training and on special projects.

The Bureau advances international enforcement cooperation and convergence in three general ways. The first is through bilateral and multilateral relationships.  The Bureau has developed an extensive network of cooperation relationships with competition agencies around the world. Many of these are based on bilateral and multilateral cooperation agreements (many in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding).   In addition to the MMAC, the Bureau currently has cooperation instruments relating to Canada’s competition and consumer protection laws with 15 foreign jurisdictions.  It is interesting to note that the MMAC is the first direct cooperation agreement with the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority.

Other legal tools, such as the U.S.-Canada Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, have permitted the U.S. Department of Justice and the Bureau to conduct joint and parallel investigations into criminal price-fixing investigations.  So called ‘second generation MOUs’, along with reciprocal information gateway provisions (such as section 29 of the Competition Act, which deals with the treatment of confidential information in the Bureau’s possession), address the exchange of confidential information between Canada and other jurisdictions, such as Hong Kong and Japan.  The MMCA is a second generation MOU that will permit the reciprocal exchange of confidential information and cross-border evidence gathering between the signatories.
Continue Reading Competition Bureau Continues to Promote International Cooperation in Enforcement – Enters into a cooperation agreement with Five Eyes Counterparts

The Canadian Competition Bureau (the “Bureau”) has released a toolkit – Strengthening Canada’s economy through pro-competitive policies (the “Toolkit”) – to assist regulators and policymakers, at all levels of government, in maximizing competition in Canadian industries. The Toolkit offers a five-step process for policymakers to assess the impact of new and existing policies on competition, and tailor those policies to maximize the benefits of competition across the Canadian economy.

The Bureau suggests engaging in a competition assessment each time a new policy is proposed or an existing policy is reviewed. The Bureau’s five-step competition assessment process is summarized below:

Step 1: Identify the policy. The first step is to specify the underlying goals that the policy is designed to achieve and the proposed measures to achieve those goals.

Step 2: Assess whether the policy impacts competition. The second step involves an assessment of the impact of the proposed measures on competition, with reference to the following four indicators of a competitive marketplace:

• the ability of businesses to enter or expand in a market or operate across borders;
• the ability of businesses to set the price, quality and quantity of the products or services sold;
• the incentives for businesses to compete vigorously; and
• the potential for consumers to switch between competing businesses.

…
Continue Reading Competition Bureau Seeks to Promote Consideration of Competition by Policymakers with New Toolkit