January 24, 2017
In my new Canadian Lawyer column today, I discuss the whistleblower provisions of the Competition Act and ask whether rewarding whistleblowers would help keep procurement markets competitive in light of increased infrastructure spending. Below is an excerpt with a link to the full column.
____________________
With the federal government’s new budget anticipated soon, infrastructure spending is once again on the minds of many Canadians. In the government’s last budget, it pledged to spend $120 billion over 10 years. Government spending means more procurement, which in turn can mean more bid rigging or other competition law issues among suppliers.
To tackle potential procurement-related competition law violations, the federal Competition Bureau has increased its efforts to educate government bodies on how to detect and deter anti-competitive practices. The Bureau has also enhanced its efforts to enforce the criminal provisions of the Competition Act.
Some of the bureau’s recent criminal enforcement initiatives include anti-bid-rigging presentations to public procurement officials, a new hotline for tipsters to report fraud and bid rigging and working to develop and adopt data-screening mechanisms (algorithms) to help procurement agencies detect competitors that have illegally co-ordinated bid submissions.
The Bureau has also been working on increasing awareness of the whistleblower provisions of the Competition Act, including launching a “Whistleblowing Initiative” several years ago and highlighting whistleblower protections in its enforcement policy announcements.
The whistleblower sections of the Competition Act (s. 66.1 and 66.2) protect the identities of people who report competition law offences to the bureau and prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who, in good faith and on reasonable belief, report potential competition law offences. Section 425.1 of the Criminal Code provides similar protections to employees who report federal or provincial offences.
(…)
For the full column see: here.
********************
SERVICES AND CONTACT
We are a Toronto based competition and advertising law firm offering business and individual clients efficient and strategic advice in relation to competition/antitrust, advertising, Internet and new media law and contest law. We also offer competition and regulatory law compliance, education and policy services to companies, trade and professional associations and government agencies.
Our experience includes advising clients in Toronto, across Canada and the United States on the application of Canadian competition and regulatory laws and we have worked on hundreds of domestic and cross-border competition, advertising and marketing, promotional contest (sweepstakes), conspiracy (cartel), abuse of dominance, compliance, refusal to deal and pricing and distribution matters. For more information about our competition and advertising law services see: competition law services.
To contact us about a potential legal matter, see: contact
For more information about our firm, visit our website: Competitionlawyer.ca
Templates/precedents and checklists to run promotional contests in Canada
Templates/precedents and checklists to comply with Canadian anti-spam law (CASL)
