On March 1, 2012, the omnibus crime bill currently making its way through the House and Senate (Bill C-10) passed third reading and was adopted by the Senate with 6 amendments (adopting a February 28, 2012 Senate Committee Report – see: Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs – Ninth Report).
Bill C-10, if it comes into force, will amend the current section 742.1 of the Criminal Code to provide that where a person is convicted of an offence and the court imposes a sentence of less than two years, the court may impose a conditional sentence (i.e., that the sentence be served in the community), except in certain circumstances.
One such circumstance is where an offence is an indictable offence, for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 14 years or life (see: Bill C-10, p. 19).
Both sections 45 (criminal conspiracy agreements, including price-fixing and market division/allocation agreements between competitors) and 47 (bid-rigging) of the Competition Act are indictable offences, subject to maximum terms of imprisonment of 14 years, increased as a result of recent amendments to the Competition Act in 2009 and 2010.
Conditional sentences have previously been ordered in a number of recent Canadian price-fixing cases, including the ongoing Quebec gasoline price-fixing cartel (see e.g.: Cartels Update: Seven More Individuals Plead Guilty in Criminal Quebec Gasoline Price-fixing Cartel).
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