Leveraging Competition Law and Policy to Promote Inclusive Growth in Canada

In November 2022, the federal government opened a consultation to review the Competition Act, Canada’s competition law, to modernize it “to better serve the public interest.”1 In light of the announced review of the Act, this paper provides a robust discussion on the problem of un-inclusive economic growth and argues for inclusive growth as path forward, realized in part through reform to Canadian. [...] As the OECD points out, “In some parts of the world, such as in Northern and Southern Africa, the effect of persistently high unemployment combined with severe levels of inequality has already resulted in social instability.”8 In the global north, growing economic inequality and a hollowing out of the middle class have sparked anger against ‘elites,’ and significantly contributed to the rise in ri. [...] We explore three changes to the Act: The purpose statement of the Act is important to the legislation because it provides the guiding rationale for the law. [...] competitive outcome.”46 In the specific context of mergers and acquisitions, the law should also “explicitly recognize the harmful First, designers of Canada’s competition legislation must clearly impacts of merger that contribute significantly to marketplace articulate to themselves (and perhaps in the legislation itself) concentration,” as the Competition Bureau has highlighted.47 the role of co. [...] As we face the prospect of an Competition Act include: increasingly inequitable society and a 1) Updating the mandate to integrate inclusive growth decline in the growth of the economy into the purpose statement; and living standards, economic policies and Canada’s competition law must 2) Reforming tests for anti-competitive harm; and be reoriented to face these modern 3) Removing the efficiencies.