Archive for the 'Developments' Category
November 21, 2013
Canada’s (relatively new now) Commissioner of Competition is on the road at the moment, having delivered remarks yesterday in India. In a short but focused speech in Kashipur India, the Commissioner focused quite a bit on the history of Canadian competition law, the importance of competition to an effective economy and compliance.
November 20, 2013
The U.S. CLE provider Strafford is hosting what I think looks like quite an interesting upcoming associations and information exchange related webinar entitled: Antitrust Risks of Association-Sponsored Market Research. “Information exchanges” (via surveys, member interaction, meetings, conventions, social media, other online fora, etc.) are of course a common and ubiquitous activity for most trade and professional associations, both in Canada and internationally. Given that they can also raise competition/antitrust law risk, however, with the potential issues in Canada and the U.S. being largely the same, this upcoming webinar caught my eye.
November 19, 2013
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it has obtained a federal court order to temporarily halt the operations and freeze the assets of an alleged fraudulent Montreal-based “Yellow Pages” business directory scheme. In making the announcement, the FTC said: “Hiding behind borders to scam churches and small businesses is a tactic that we’ve seen before. … Scammers need to know that we have great relationships with our law enforcement partners in Canada and, as this case shows, we can and will work together to protect our consumers.”
November 15, 2013
Canada’s new Commissioner of Competition, John Pecman, delivered remarks yesterday in Toronto centered around what he has been referring to recently as the “4Cs” (the Competition Bureau’s four current areas of focus: compliance; communication; collaboration; and Canadians). As part of his remarks, as he has been doing since last fall, he once again discussed trade associations, and in particular association compliance and the importance of adopting credible and effective competition law compliance programs.
November 15, 2013
A few upcoming Canadian Bar Association (CBA) Competition Law Section events caught my eye including the following on the recent Apple cartel case and MFN provisions, recent Canadian and international corruption law developments, Supreme Court’s recent indirect purchaser class action judgments and a roundup of recent important competition law developments.
November 15, 2013
The Americans are not ones to pussy foot around when it comes to economic crime. Yesterday, the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights held cartel related hearings bluntly entitled “Time Change: Cartel Prosecution: Stopping Price Fixers and Protecting Consumers”. Testimony included remarks by William Baer (Assistant A.G. in the DoJ’s Antitrust Division), Ronald Hosko (Assistant Director in the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division) and several academics and private antitrust practitioners. Witness testimony has now been posted along with a webcast – see: here.
November 13, 2013
Given the recently increased focus on criminal competition law matters (e.g., cartels) and whistleblowing, the latter in the competition law world and corporate crime area generally, I thought I would launch a new whistleblowing page on the blog. A kind of rolling compilation of Canadian competition law whistleblowing information. For my first go at a few key recent Canadian competition law whistleblowing sources see: whistleblowers or below. As usual for my competition law overviews, I’ve endeavoured to include a few quotes that I’ve come across and thought were really rather good, including Ralph Nadar’s inaugural definition of “whistleblower” from the 1970s.
November 12, 2013
The National Competition Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) has published a new edition of its longstanding Canadian Competition Law Review (Fall 2013). This new issue includes the following articles (and two comments): “Monopsony Power and the Relevance of the Sell-Side Market”, “The Use of Reduced-Form Equations to Estimate Cartel Price Effects: Lessons from the Kingston Retail Gasoline Cartel” and “A Canadian Court Considers the Crown’s Repudiation of an Anti-Trust Plea Agreement: Still a Work in Progress”. For copies of the new papers see: Canadian Competition Law Review.
Templates/precedents and checklists to run promotional contests in Canada
Templates/precedents and checklists to comply with Canadian anti-spam law (CASL)
