Future of Competition Policy in Canada CBA CLFIRS March 2023

The vast majority of vertical conduct (i.e., competitor/supplier interactions) is not harmful Submission of the Competition Law and Foreign Investment Page 3 Review Section of the Canadian Bar Association and the Act already has many civil provisions specifically designed to address the types of vertical conduct that have the potential to be harmful (by dominant and non-dominant firms). [...] If the Government decides that the Bureau should be permitted to compel the production of information for the purpose of market studies (i.e., outside of the enforcement context), the Section submits that the Bureau’s powers should be subject to oversight by the Competition Tribunal or courts in order to safeguard due process rights and avoid disproportional burdens for the persons from whom infor. [...] Creating additional exemptions to pre-merger notification rules Exempting additional classes of non-problematic merger transactions from the application of the pre-merger notification provisions of the Act would increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the merger review process in Canada.8 In this regard, the CBA Section is of the view that these exemptions should include, but need not be limi. [...] Submission of the Competition Law and Foreign Investment Page 15 Review Section of the Canadian Bar Association The efficiencies defence has been subject to significant debate over the years, with some commentators arguing that the Act is one of the most economically sophisticated competition laws in the world largely due to the effic. [...] Its primary purpose is “fostering Europe’s key political objective of digital sovereignty.”40 Further, the foundation of the DMA rests on the (increasingly dubious) notion that the digital economy can somehow be separated categorically from the rest of the economy when in fact much of the mainstream economy is digitized.