Archive for the 'Competition Bureau' Category
Canada’s contribution to the 11th OECD Global Forum on Competition, held last week in Paris, is now available online: Improving International Co-operation in Cartel Investigations – Global Forum on Competition – Contribution from Canada
Overview
The Global Forum on Competition included discussions on:
Commodities and price volatility:
“This full day session will start with an overview of recent price volatility; discuss its causes and present recent OECD work. Substantive discussions will draw on expert analysis and on the experiences of competition authorities. The day will culminate in a distillation of practical suggestions for competition authorities when faced with issues in these markets.”
Improving international co-operation in cartel investigations:
“This session will examine how the existing frameworks for international cooperation in cartel investigations could be modified or improved. The roundtable will also explore how international co-operation works in other fields, such as bribery, tax and money laundering, to see if any practices can be extrapolated to cartel enforcement.”
State-owned enterprises and competitive neutrality:
“This session will allow participants to hear the preliminary findings of the Report on Competitive Neutrality which is under preparation by the OECD as well as to present country experiences with competitive distortions resulting from an uneven playing field in markets where public undertakings co-exist with private competitors.”
Speeches included remarks by Pascal Lamy (WTO Director General), Otaviano Canuto (World Bank Vice-President), Angel Gurria (OECD Secretary-General) and Frederic Jenny (Chairman of the OECD Competition Committee).
On February 17, 2012, the Competition Bureau announced that Construction G.T.R.L. (1990) Inc., Acoustique JCG Inc. and Enterprises de Construction OPC Inc. have pleaded guilty to bid-rigging in Quebec Superior Court relating to the expansion of the Chicoutimi Hospital in 2003 (see: Quebec Construction Companies Plead Guilty to Rigging Bids for the Chicoutimi Hospital).
In making the announcement, the Bureau said:
“The court ordered Construction G.T.R.L. to pay a fine of $50,000, and Acoustique JCG and Entreprises de Construction OPC to pay a fine of $25,000 each. The companies are subject to a court order for a period of 10 years.
‘Bid-rigging harms everyone but the criminals who cheat the system for their own financial gain,’ said Melanie Aitken, Commissioner of Competition. ‘In this case, the bid-rigging scheme ultimately harmed the Chicoutimi Hospital and Saguenay residents, by preventing the hospital from obtaining a competitive price for its renovation.’
The Bureau announced in November 2008 that three construction companies, and certain of their executives, were charged with rigging bids submitted for the expansion and refitting of the emergency room at the Chicoutimi Hospital in 2003. The Bureau’s investigation found that the parties entered into an agreement to pre-determine the winner of the contract.
The parties have now pleaded guilty for rigging bids for the Chicoutimi Hospital contract.”
On February 7, 2012, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench issued an important decision on the award of costs in private competition law civil actions under section 36 of the Competition Act. This case is the first reported decision regarding a party’s right to claim costs under section 36 of the Competition Act (see: 321665 Alberta Ltd. v. ExxonMobil Canada Ltd.).
In 321665 Alberta Ltd. v. ExxonMobil Canada Ltd., 2012 ABQB 76 (Alta. Q.B.), the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench interpreted the plaintiff’s right in a successful upstream cartel case to recover costs in the action under section 36 of the Competition Act.
Section 36 of the Competition Act is the operative provision for commencing competition law private actions in Canada, which provides that private plaintiffs may sue for, among other things, violations of the criminal provisions of the Act (e.g., conspiracy agreements, bid-rigging, criminal misleading advertising) and recover actual loss or damage suffered, “together with any additional amount that the court may allow not exceeding the full cost to him of any investigation in connection with the matter and of proceedings under [section 36]”.
To date, however, it has not been clear what the scope of a plaintiff’s right was to recover the costs of bringing a private action under section 36.
In an interesting story in the Montreal Gazette today, Douglas Quan reports that a Public Safety Canada study calls for “more independent oversight” to “combat bribery, extortion, collusive bidding and other illegal activities in Canada’s commercial construction industry”:
“’Every contractual link provides an opportunity for someone to pay a bribe in return for the award of the contract,’ the study said.
The corruption can take many forms. Contractors have been known to pay bribes in order to obtain a contract. Union officials have threatened work slowdowns unless contractors pay them money. Competing firms have entered into agreements where they share their bid prices with one another prior to bidding in order to pre-determine the winner and then the winning firm pays a kickback to the losing firm. Such corruption can lead to unsafe construction projects because they ‘fail to meet safety requirements as a result of fraud in building materials or the bribery of public inspectors,’ the study warned.”
The construction industry has long been the target of allegations and investigations by competition/antitrust regulators. For example, some of the construction related cases in Canada, many of which have also involved trade associations, have included building contractors, corrugated metal pipe manufacturers, electrical contractors, gypsum dealers and manufacturers, plumbing contractors, among many others.
The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Globe and Mail and others have reported that the Competition Bureau (the “Bureau”) is investigating alleged price-fixing in the setting of interbank lending rates.
Interbank rates include the London interbank offered rate (“LIBOR”), Tokyo interbank offered rate (“TIBOR”) and euro interbank offered rate (“Euribor”).
The essence of the allegations in this ongoing and global case appears to be whether, if true, the fixing of interbank rates adversely affected the price of derivative and other financial products (such as credit default swaps, mortgages, etc.).
On February 9, 2012 a Revised Scheduling Order was issued and a Notice of Motion was filed by The Toronto Real Estate Board (“TREB”) in the ongoing Commissioner of Competition v. The Toronto Real Estate Board abuse of dominance (monopoly) case.
The Competition Bureau (the “Bureau”) and other Canadian regulatory authorities have markedly increased their enforcement of misleading advertising in the past several years. The following is a brief summary of some of the penalties imposed (or agreed to pursuant to settlement agreements) in Canadian advertising and marketing law cases.
It seems that a lot of time recently has been spent debating whether the price of products should be fully disclosed in advertising (and that many cases and regulatory announcements have turned on this apparently, but perhaps not so, simple question).
For example, last year in June, Bell Canada entered into a settlement (a consent agreement) with the Competition Bureau and agreed to stop making allegedly misleading claims relating to the prices for its services and pay an administrative monetary penalty of C $10 million. According to the Bureau, Bell charged higher prices than advertised for many of its services, including home phone, Internet, satellite TV and wireless (see: Bell Canada Agrees to Pay $10 Million Fine in Misleading Advertising Case).
Then late last year, the Conservative Government announced that airlines would be required to disclose the full price of airline fares by the end of 2012 (including airport taxes and additional charges), pursuant to (long-anticipated) regulations under the Canada Transportation Act (see: Federal Government to Introduce Advertising Regulations for Airlines).
Templates/precedents and checklists to run promotional contests in Canada
Templates/precedents and checklists to comply with Canadian anti-spam law (CASL)
