Archive for the 'Publications' Category
Earlier today, the Retail Council of Canada (RCC) issued a news release and its submission to the Standing Committee on National Finance regarding retail pricing in Canada. The Committee commenced a study of the reasons for price differences in Canada and the United States last fall, and has heard from a wide spectrum of witnesses, including from government (the Competition Bureau, Canadian Heritage, Transport Canada, CBSA and Department of Finance), the private sector, academics and industry associations and groups.
In addressing the Committee, the RCC’s President Diane Brisebois urged them to “help set the record straight about the real causes of price differences in Canada versus the United States”.
According to the RCC, Canadian retailers are confronted by the following factors that impact retail pricing in Canada: (i) import duties on finished goods, (ii) supply management affecting food product prices (i.e., marketing boards that impact the prices of dairy, poultry and other products), (iii) vendor pricing (i.e., higher prices for Canadian retailers) and (iv) regulatory harmonization (e.g., in the book industry, in relation to which the RCC said Canada was the “poster child” for regulation leading to higher book prices). The RCC particularly emphasized existing “outdated” tariffs for adversely impacting Canadian retail prices.
The RCC’s submission discusses, among other things, the Canadian retail industry and suggested areas for government action (in relation to country pricing, duty remission on imported consumer goods, supply management and regulatory harmonization/red tape reduction).
Interestingly, the RCC did not address any competition or marketplace concentration issues in its submission, which is interesting given the high level of consolidation in many Canadian industries (including in some retail segments), except to comment on increased foreign competition:
In an interesting recent note, Jones Day has commented on a recent FTC administrative action against three of the largest U.S. suppliers of ductile iron pipe fittings (DIPF) alleging that they engaged in price-fixing and other anticompetitive behaviour. In connection with this case, the FTC has published a proposed consent order for public comment to resolve claims that one supplier, Star, violated section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act by engaging in price fixing.
The case is interesting in that the FTC’s complaint alleges that two of the suppliers, McWane and Sigma, invited the third, Star, to collude by communicating through a letter to common customers. The FTC also alleges that the suppliers utilized an industry trade association (the Ductile Iron Fittings Research Association) to exchange sales information to monitor and enforce the parties’ alleged agreement.
The FTC’s proposed consent order would prohibit Star from: (i) agreeing to fix, raise or stabilize DIPF prices (or allocate markets, customers or business opportunities for DIPF), (ii) soliciting any competitor to participate in such anti-competitive conduct or (iii) participate in any agreement between competitors to exchange competitively sensitive information (e.g., sales information).
In Canada, while there is no express provision in the Competition Act exclusively governing information exchanges, the principal risk of such exchanges between competitors is that they can lead to agreements (e.g., price-fixing agreements) that violate the criminal conspiracy provisions of the Competition Act (section 45). Such information can include prices, costs, customers, suppliers, markets, market shares and business and strategic plans.
Information exchanges can also be relevant in establishing the existence of an illegal agreement under section 45 (i.e., be used by the Bureau, a court or a private plaintiff to infer the existence of an agreement that violates section 45).
Our friends at the Canadian Council on International Law have announced a call for papers for the CCIL 41st Annual Conference: Ronald St. John Macdonald Young Scholars Award.
From the CCIL:
“The Canadian Council on International Law is inviting international law papers from students who are studying at the graduate or undergraduate level in any discipline. Articling students are also eligible: papers from articling students will be considered under the graduate student category. Successful applicants will give a presentation based on their papers at the 2012 CCIL Annual Conference to be held in Ottawa from November 8-10, 2012. One award will be given for the best graduate paper and one for the best undergraduate paper. Winners will receive the fourth annual Ronald St. John Macdonald Young Scholars Award. (Subsidies for travel to the annual conference are available.)
This year’s CCIL conference theme is “SOS International Law: International Law and Disasters and Emergencies”. Crises and emergencies come in many forms. They may be financial, environmental or purely political, as states break apart, governments are ousted or armed conflicts occur. From the financial turmoil in the United States and Europe, to the surge for democracy in the Arab world and resulting civil conflicts, to natural disasters in Haiti and Japan, and to the predicament of nuclear proliferation in Iran and elsewhere, international relations have been preoccupied by these crises and emergencies. And behind these newspaper headlines are countless crises averted or emergencies abated, where early intervention forestalls disasters before they emerge.
International reactions to emergencies and crises are the stuff of high politics. In some instances, international law may prove a useful tool in the decision-making of states confronting such calamities. In other cases, it seems woefully inadequate and plays at best a supporting role. What part is there for international law in dealing with crises and emergencies? Is international law capable of providing useful guidance during catastrophes? Or is it instead burdened with feet of clay?
Papers that reflect the conference theme will be given strong consideration by the CCIL Ronald St. John Macdonald Award Selection Committee. Papers must be no more than 35 pages in length.”
The A38 Journal of International Law has announced its second call for papers. From A38:
“The A38 Journal of International Law is a quarterly academic journal, published online, that seeks to provide an international forum for the publication of articles in the field of International Law. The Journal is currently soliciting submissions for Volume I, Issue 2, which will be published July 2012. The submission deadline for Issue 2 is May 31, 2012. We welcome submissions from academics, practitioners, students, researchers and experts from within the legal community. We have a strong preference for articles that are not descriptive, but that instead assert and defend a well-reasoned position.
The Canadian Council of Chief Executives recently published a paper endorsing a new national security test for proposed foreign takeovers of Canadian companies entitled “Chinese Foreign Direct Investment in Canada: Threat or Opportunity”.
According to the author, Dr. Moran, a professor of international business and finance at Georgetown University, the majority of proposed foreign acquisitions “pose no plausible threat whatsoever” to national security.
From the CCCE:
“In today’s report, Dr. Moran considers two issues of central interest to Canada as Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) grows to be a major force in the global economy: how does Chinese FDI affect the structure of natural resource industries around the world?; and when does the foreign acquisition of an existing firm constitute a national security threat to that firm’s home country?
On the first question, Dr. Moran rejects the suggestion that Chinese investments in the natural resource sector have the effect of “locking up” the world’s resource base. On the contrary, a review of several dozen recent Chinese acquisitions and procurement arrangements shows that most of them actually help to expand and diversify resource production and increase competition within the affected industry.
As to whether a given foreign takeover poses a risk to national security, Dr. Moran recommends the adoption of a new threat-assessment framework based on three distinct categories of undesirable foreign acquisitions: takeovers that would render the home country dependent on a foreign-controlled supplier that might deny or place limits on the provision of goods or services crucial to the functioning of the home economy; takeovers that would allow the transfer into foreign hands of technology or expertise that might be deployed in a manner harmful to the home country’s interests; takeovers that would give the new owner’s government, or some other hostile force, a platform for espionage, surveillance or sabotage, through the provision of goods or services crucial to the functioning of the home economy.
Acquisitions that fall into any of those three categories can legitimately be rejected on national security grounds, Dr. Moran says. However, that accounts for only a small percentage of proposed foreign takeovers. The rest, he says, may or may not deserve to be blocked on other grounds, but cannot fairly be considered threats to national security.
The adoption of this three-part threat assessment framework by Canada – and other countries – would “help to dampen politicization of individual cases, enabling swift and confident approval of those acquisitions from which genuine national security threats are absent,” Dr. Moran says. The entire international economic system would benefit, he argues, if OECD countries – and non-OECD countries such as China and India – were to accept this common threat assessment methodology.”
In March, 2009, amendments to the Canadian Investment Canada Act (“ICA”) introduced a new national security review mechanism, under which the Minister and Federal Cabinet have the power to review proposed or completed investments that may be “injurious to national security” in Canada. This relatively new national security review regime, which is distinct and administered separately from the general “net benefit” to Canada foreign investment test under the ICA, arose as a result of recommendations made by the Competition Policy Review Panel in its report entitled Compete to Win (which preceded significant amendments to Canada’s competition and foreign investment laws in 2009 and 2010).
The American Bar Association, Section of Antitrust Law has published its Spring 2012 edition of Antitrust.
Stories and articles in the Spring edition include Convergence in International Merger Control (Larry Fullerton and Megan Alvarez), The ICN: A Decennial Retrospective (Ian John and Joshua Gray), the Role of Anti-Cartel Compliance Programs in Preventing Cartel Behaviour (Joseph Murray and William Kolasky), The Year of the Metal Rabbit: Antitrust Enforcement in China (Jim O’Connell) in 2011 and New Directions in Russian Competition Law (Sarah Reynolds).
Stanford University Press will be publishing a new book in May in a new series on global competition law entitled The Global Limits of Competition Law.
From Stanford University Press:
“Over the last three decades, the field of antitrust law has grown increasingly prominent, and more than one hundred countries have enacted competition law statutes. As competition law expands to jurisdictions with very different economic, social, cultural, and institutional backgrounds, the debates over its usefulness have similarly evolved.
This book, the first in a new series on global competition law, critically assesses the importance of competition law, its development and modern practice, and the global limits that have emerged. This volume will be a key resource to both scholars and practitioners interested in antitrust, competition law, economics, business strategy, and administrative sciences.”
The Antitrust law Section of the American Bar Association recently issued a catalogue of its 2012 antitrust publications, which includes publications in the following areas: mergers, civil litigation, criminal enforcement, international antitrust, intellectual property, among others.
Templates/precedents and checklists to run promotional contests in Canada
Templates/precedents and checklists to comply with Canadian anti-spam law (CASL)
