Canadian COMPETITION LAW

January 23, 2010

Steve Szentesi will be chairing and speaking and Tom Hakemi will be speaking at an upcoming CLE BC competition law seminar on March 18, 2010 in Vancouver at the Coast Coal Harbour Hotel: Canada’s New Competition & Foreign Investment Law 2010.  This upcoming half day practitioner-oriented seminar, which will be held one week after the final amendments to Canada’s Competition Act come into force, will review the major changes to Canada’s competition and foreign investment law regimes.

From CLE BC:

“Recent amendments to Canada’s Competition Act are the most significant changes in 25 years.  These changes now make familiarity with the key concepts of competition law essential to counsel in a wide variety of practice areas that traditionally did not deal with competition issues.  You will learn issues that should raise red flags in your practice and learn the practice points that you need to know as counsel.   Each topic will discuss a major area of change.  The new rules, guidelines, penalties and practice points.  The course will include discussions of the new merger notification, Investment Canada Act, criminal conspiracy, abuse of dominance and misleading advertising rules and related new Competition Bureau enforcement guidelines.  Join us and discover this new aspect of your practice.”

The recent sweeping amendments include fundamental changes to the merger, criminal conspiracy, abuse of dominance, misleading advertising and criminal pricing provisions of the Competition Act.  The recent amendments are also expected to have a significant impact on private competition law actions and class actions in Canada as a result of lowering the bar to establish criminal conspiracies under section 45 of the Competition Act.

The program for this half day seminar, which will include speakers from five Vancouver law firms, will include:

New U.S.-style Two-track Conspiracy Regime:  (i) new “hard core” criminal cartel offences, (ii) new civil provisions for anti-competitive agreements, (iii) increased penalties, (iv) impacts on trade associations and common commercial agreements, (v) new Competition Bureau enforcement guidelines, (vi) impacts on private actions and class actions and (vii) key practice points for counsel.

Misleading Advertising, Pricing & Distribution Practices:  (i) the new misleading advertising rules, (ii) new penalties, (iii) new bid rigging rules, (iv) repeal of the criminal predatory pricing and price discrimination sections, (v) new civil price maintenance and private access provisions and (vi) key practice points for counsel.

Merger Review & Notification: (i) new two-stage merger notification process, (ii) changes to merger control thresholds, waiting periods and forms, (iii) supplementary information requests, (iv) implications for M&A agreements, (v) how to manage substantive merger clearance within the new regime and (vi) managing your client’s expectations about timing and costs.

Investment Canada Act Amendments: (i) changes to the Investment Canada Act, (ii) state owned enterprise guidelines, (iii) new national security test for foreign investment, (iv) privilege and disclosure and (v) interplay between Competition Act and Investment Canada Act.

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