Avoiding Nightmares: Moving From Competition Compliance Training To Compliance Management

For conspiracies, bid-rigging and other criminal competition offences, the risk of detection, prosecution and punishment has never been greater — cartel cases are up 3,000% in Canada since 2000. And the costs of contravening the law (or even simply becoming entangled in a criminal investigation) have never been greater: damaging publicity, disruption to business operations, millions of dollars spent conducting internal investigations and defending criminal and civil litigation, multi-million dollar fines, potential incarceration and disqualification from public procurement.

Unfortunately, despite these realities, a surprising number of companies still lack rigorous (or any) compliance programs. For those companies with some form of compliance program in place, many continue to rely exclusively on (what the Canadian Competition Bureau refers to derisively as) a "paper and preach" approach, based on (some) training alone.