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ARTICLE · 18 AUGUST 2022

Canada's Competition Act Amendments: Making It Riskier To Compete On Price?

Stikeman Elliott LLP
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One of the recent amendments to the Competition Act has the potential to seriously chill price competition by leading Canadian businesses.

CanadaAntitrust/Competition Law
Shawn C.D. Neylan
Shawn C.D. Neylan
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One of the recent amendments to the Competition Act (on which we commented in a prior post) has the potential to seriously chill price competition by leading Canadian businesses.

Normally, the objective of competition law is to encourage competition on the basis that competition benefits consumers and results in a stronger and more competitive Canadian economy. This objective goes back to at least 1889 when Canada's first law criminalizing price fixing cartels was enacted.

The recent amendments to the Competition Act, passed with no Parliamentary debate as part of a budget implementation bill, include an amendment to a section in the Competition Act that provides examples of anti-competitive acts for purposes of the abuse of dominance provision. The amendments added a new example of anti-competitive act:

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