Canadian COMPETITION LAW

I’m a bit of a sap for good old competition/antitrust quotes.  The cases are sometimes ancient, doubtful any of them are good law anymore and it is virtually impossible to decode from some old decisions what on earth they might actually stand for.  Ah the days when our ancient courts cited more ancient English law, precedents were rare (well, that hasn’t changed much in Canada) and economists were unknown.  In the spirit of competition nostalgia, here are a couple great ones I came across today on a bit of research requiring a trip back through time:

On competition (Weidman v. Shragge, 1929):

“On the other hand, every step taken in the past to enlarge the bounds of human freedom of thought and action has stimulated discovery and invention, and as a product thereof, increased competition, which may have left by the way here and there financial wrecks as the result thereof.  This has made men cry aloud in denunciation of the waste of human energy, and loss of human comfort resulting from competition.  The cry is often a thoughtless one.  People raising it seldom reckon with the absolute necessary waste there is and must ever be incidental to growth, though all nature attests it on every hand.  Destroy competition and you remove the force by which humanity has reached so far.  The altruism some people would substitute for it may, when it has arrived, bring with it a higher sense of justice but it has not arrived.  To apply the standard of profit that might enable the stupid, the slothful, the ignorant, the over-capitalized man working with antiquated machinery, and a mill or warehouse over-manned, to compete with the standard that may be fairly reached by the men of brains, of energy, of sleepless vigilance, with only adequate capital to earn dividends for, and all the advantages that the latest improvements, invention or discovery can furnish, would be a sorry one indeed for society.  The fate of the former class must not be considered.  But the latter must not resort to unfair devices.  They do not need them.  They are without them the best kind of commercial asset the world can have, and must never be depressed or suppressed by the law.”

On combines (R. v. Alexander, 1932):

“Then what is a combine?  The statute does not answer.  The word was not known to the dictionaries as a noun till less than fifty years ago.  It does not appear in the Imperial Dictionary (London), 1859, or in Worcester’s Dictionary (Boston) 1872.  Its first appearance as a noun, so far as I have been able to discover, was in the Century Dictionary (New York) 1889, where the following definition is given: – ‘Combine, a combination or agreement: especially a secret combination for the purposes of committing fraud; a conspiracy.  (Colloq. and recent; First publicly used in the trial of an alderman for bribery in New York in 1886.)  This definition is carried without change into the last definition of the Century Dictionary (1913).   The word appears as a noun in Murray’s New English Dictionary (Oxford) 1893, with this definition: – ‘Combine – A combination, conspiracy, plot, U.S. colloq., – A combination of persons in furtherance of their own interests, commercial or political; a private combination for fraudulent ends.’  The New Standard dictionary (New York and London), 1913, carries this definition: – ‘Combine, A combination of persons, especially a union to effect, by underhand dealings what honest efforts openly employed cannot obtain; cabal; conspiracy.’  Webster’s New International Dictionary (Springfield, Mass.), 1914, has the word with this definition: ‘Combine.  Usually a combination of persons to effect some commercial, industrial or political object; – usually in a bad sense, and implying illegality or fraud.”

[I particularly like the bit about combines being equivalent to “cabals” – rather nice, if somewhat demonic, turn of phrase.]

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