Draft Guidelines Confirm that Canadian Competition Bureau Will Apply New Criminal Competitor Collaboration Offence Narrowly

On May 8, 2009, the Competition Bureau issued draft Competitor Collaboration Guidelines. The draft Guidelines describe the Bureau's general approach to assessing competitor collaborations under recently enacted provisions of the Competition Act relating to agreements among competitors. These new provisions come into force on March 12, 2010.

The new law will replace the existing conspiracy provision with:

• a per se criminal offence for agreements between competitors or potential competitors to fix or maintain prices, allocate sales, customers or territories, or fix or lessen production or supply levels – whether or not the agreement is likely to have any effect on competition (section 45); and