On October 28, 2022, the Director of Investments issued his Annual Report on the administration of the Investment Canada Act (“ICA”) for the fiscal year commencing April 1, 2021 and ending March 31, 2022 (the “2021/2022 fiscal year”). The Annual Report provides insight on key trends relating to foreign investment and national security reviews in Canada.
Continue Reading Canada Lays out Direct Path to National Security Review for SOE-implicated Investments in Critical Mineral Sector
On June 23, 2022, Bill C-19, also known as the Budget Implementation Act, 2022, No.1 (“BIA”), received royal assent. The BIA was tabled in Parliament on April 7, 2022 and included significant proposed amendments to the Competition Act (the “Act”).
Continue Reading Significant Amendments to Canada’s Competition Act Are Now Law: What You Need to Know
The Trudeau government’s plan for a quick and easy win on competition law reform owing to public pressure to tame the large digital platforms will result in significant changes to the Competition Act being pushed through with little to no scrutiny because there is not enough time to properly consult and debate the proposed reforms under the Budget Implementation Act (“BIA”) process. While Justin Trudeau campaigned to control the use of omnibus budget bills, he continues their use even for significant amendments to economic framework legislation.
Continue Reading Rapid passage of Competition Act amendments through Budget Implementation Act process can cause more harm than good
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:
Earlier this month, John Pecman published a highly topical article in Competition Policy International on the dominance and durable market power that Big Tech companies are said to have in today’s economy and on the responses from international competition agencies titled “Dethroning the Digital Platform Champions”.
“One has to applaud the success of the so-called
The competitiveness and reach of Canadian wireline and wireless services are critical to the economic prosperity and social inclusion of Canadians. It is not surprising therefore that the Canadian Competition Bureau identified telecommunications as a priority area in its 2019-2020 Annual Plan.
True to this plan, in August of this year the Bureau released
On November 12, 2019, Jenna Ward and Justine Reisler attended the Global Competition Review’s 3rd Annual Women in Antitrust Conference in Washington, D.C. with over 100 female delegates from around the world. During this conference, female thought leaders discussed a variety of topics, including (i) big tech; (ii) killer acquisitions; (iii) information sharing; and
On October 3, 2014, the Commissioner of Competition (“Commissioner”) announced the appointment of Rambod Behboodi as the Deputy Commissioner of the Competition Promotion Branch – the new branch within the Competition Bureau (“Bureau”) that will be created as part of the Bureau’s realignment initiative, where its existing eight branches will be consolidated into four. The
