In a recent speech given at the Canadian Bar Association's
Competition Law Spring Conference, Commissioner of Competition,
Matthew Boswell, announced the Bureau's decision to place more
focus on identifying non-notifiable mergers which could potentially
raise competition law concerns.
While the Competition Act ("the Act")
requires pre-merger notification of certain proposed mergers when
prescribed monetary thresholds are exceeded, the Act has
application to all mergers, both proposed and recently completed,
where such mergers prevent or lessen, or are likely to prevent or
lessen, competition substantially. In an effort to identify
potentially problematic non-notifiable mergers, the role of the
Bureau's Merger Intelligence and Notification Unit has been
expanded to include a broader focus on intelligence gathering with
respect to non-notifiable merger transactions. Within two months of
the implementation of this broader focus, the Bureau has already
detected two
