Changes To Canada's Civil Competitor Collaboration Provisions & Property Controls Enforcement Guidance

Introduction

This bulletin is the third in our subject-matter specific series explained in the article: "A new playing field: Summarizing sweeping reforms to the Canadian Competition Act", which summarizes key changes to Canada's Competition Act (the "Act"). Over the last two years, the Act has been substantially reformed through three separate rounds of amendments, most recently on June 20, 2024, by Bill C-59, known as The Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act.¹

This bulletin focuses on the expansion of the scope of review and range of penalties now in force as they relate to the civil competitor collaboration provisions in section 90.1 of the Act. These provisions previously allowed the Canadian competition regulator, the Competition Bureau (the "Bureau") to challenge competitor agreements that might be anti-competitive but did not meet the high threshold of "criminal conspiracies." While the Competition Tribunal (the "Tribunal") could previously stop