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April 8, 2014

Earlier today, the Competition Bureau announced that one company and two individuals have pleaded guilty to price-fixing under the Competition Act in relation to an ocean freight cartel (see: here).  According to the Bureau, these pleas relate to a price-fixing cartel for various ocean freight related surcharges (including surcharges for currency exchange rate fluctuations and fuel) in operation from 2005 to 2011, which included agreements on rates or formulas used to calculate rates for various surcharges.

The corporate accused (ECU Line Canada Inc. (“ECU”)) was fined $1 million and the two individual accused, both executives of ECU, were sentenced to concurrent conditional sentences of three and four months.  On April 9th the Bureau announced two more guilty pleas in this case and a further corporate fine of $675,000.

Aside from emphasizing that criminal competition law offences remain an enforcement priority for the Bureau (which remains a constant), I noticed that the Bureau is now more systematically including links to its cartel detection tools (e.g., its Immunity Program, Leniency Program and recently announced Whistleblower Initiative) and promoting some of its recently updated competition compliance resources (e.g., its recently launched Corporate Compliance Video).

With respect to compliance, the Bureau is expected to launch a public consultation on revised compliance resources in the near future (with the Commissioner of Competition announcing yesterday that the Bureau had hired an external consultant to review options for more effective Competition Act compliance – see: here).

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