April 4, 2014
The Continuing Legal Education Society of British Columbia (CLE BC) has published its Annual Review of Law & Practice – 2014. This summary of major areas of Canadian law applicable in British Columbia includes my co-authored chapter on Canadian competition law developments and trends in 2013.
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
One competition law topic that I continually find interesting is joint ventures (i.e., collaborations between competitors). While this is a significant area, with a variety of competition law issues that may need to be addressed in relation to a broad spectrum of types of JVs (e.g., joint marketing, joint production, joint R&D, etc.), I have always found the issues that can arise in the JV context very interesting.
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 29, 2014
Private parties may commence damages actions under the Competition Act (the “Act”) for violations of the criminal provisions of the Act (under Part VI) or a breach of a court or Competition Tribunal (“Tribunal”) order made under the Act.
March 27, 2014
The University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy has published a new research paper on Canada’s foreign investment regime entitled China’s State-Owned Enterprises and Canada’s FDI Policy (authored by Wendy Dobson, University of Toronto).
March 20, 2014
Canada’s Competition Bureau has issued new Price Maintenance Enforcement Guidelines for public comment (see: Competition Bureau Seeks Comments on its Draft Price Maintenance Guidelines).
March 20, 2014
Guest post by Martin G. Masse
(with Neil Campbell, Monica Podgomy)
Martin Masse at McMillan has written what I thought was a very good and interesting update on recent changes made by Public Works in Canada to tighten up their procurement policies (reprinted with permission).
Templates/precedents and checklists to run promotional contests in Canada
Templates/precedents and checklists to comply with Canadian anti-spam law (CASL)
