Archive for the 'Amendments' Category
April 24, 2014
Readers of my blog will know that I like competition, a lot. I have also, as have many others, been following (and commenting a little) on the ongoing beer retailing regulation debate going on in Ontario, where I spend a lot of my time. While there has now been a lot written on this issue, and a significant amount of commentary, I thought that this new Sun News video sums up the key issues very well indeed (including key results of competition: price, choice and innovation) and dispels some of the myths being put forward for maintaining the current status quo and concentration in beer retailing in Ontario.
April 18, 2014
Guest post by Andrei Mincov
(Trademark Factory – reprinted with permission)
As many of you know, the Federal Government recently introduced Bill C-31, the Economic Action Plan 2014, No. 1. Among the changes to almost 40 different pieces of legislation, it introduces many significant and long-awaited changes to the Trade-marks Act.
March 30, 2014
Canada’s Competition Bureau has issued a number of new anti-cartel (Competition Act conspiracy) compliance materials, including an updated version of its Bid-Rigging Pamphlet and two new pamphlets: a Competitor Collaboration Pamphlet (a more comprehensive set of Bureau enforcement guidelines on this topic already exists) and an entirely new Trade Associations Pamphlet.
The Bureau had been planning to issue a standalone Bulletin on associations several years ago, but has evidently opted to rely on the association related discussion in its Competitor Collaboration Guidelines and this newly issued short pamphlet. The Bureau has also issued a new video on competition law compliance.
March 30, 2014
In an interesting and important decision issued late last week, the British Columbia Supreme Court has certified a Competition Act class action against Visa Canada Corporation, MasterCard International Inc. and a number of major banks (including Bank of America, BMO, Bank of Nova Scotia and CIBC) (Watson v. Bank of America Corporation, 2014 BCSC 532). In this case the plaintiff seeks to represent two classes of Canadian merchants who accepted payments for goods or services by way of Visa and MasterCard credit cards from 2001 to the present.
March 3, 2014
It seems to me that competition law issues are in the media a lot more over the past few years. And so they should be (ok that’s my, slightly, biased view as a competition lawyer), given that competition affects virtually every decision Canadian consumers make – from buying groceries, to filling up the car, to cell phone plans to choice of where to buy their beer (a recent bugaboo for me of late, the liquor retailing debate).
February 18, 2014
Earlier today, the Competition Bureau announced Its most recent new competition advocacy initiative, relating to the regulation of the Toronto taxi industry (see: Competition Bureau Provides Submission to City of Toronto’s Taxicab Industry Review). The Bureau also issued a companion Submission by the Commissioner of Competition to the City of Toronto Taxicab Industry Review.
The key recommendations made in the Bureau’s newest competition advocacy initiative include Issuing new taxi licenses in Toronto and amending regulations to allow new cost-savings software applications to pay for motor vehicle transport services.
February 11, 2014
Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg have issued a new note on a bit of a competition law bombshell included in Canada’s federal budget earlier today (Proposed Amendment to Canada’s Competition Act to Prohibit “Unjustified” Cross-Border Price Discrimination) – a plan to legislatively address perceived cross-border price discrimination being faced by Canadian consumers (reprinted with permission).
January 21, 2014
Steve Szentesi
Kevin Wright (Davis LLP)
Extract from a chapter to be published in CLEBC
Annual Review of Law & Practice – 2014
The following are some of the key merger and Investment Canada Act developments in Canada in 2013 (late 2012 to early 2014) from our forthcoming chapter in CLEBC’s Annual Review of Law & Practice – 2014.
Templates/precedents and checklists to run promotional contests in Canada
Templates/precedents and checklists to comply with Canadian anti-spam law (CASL)
