I recently became aware of changes to the Canadian Competition Act (the Act) meant to modernize this piece of legislation, including to give it a little more teeth.

The changes at issue include the following, in case you hadn’t been following this (I hadn’t):

• The act now prohibits “drip-pricing” by on-line retailers, as it may be tantamount to false (or misleading) advertising. This is familiar to anyone who has shopped on-line where you may be drawn to a particular source offering a what seems like a good deal, until you go through the whole process and realize fees and costs are successively tacked on, so that you end-up with a price that is substantially more than the “price” that attracted you in the first place.
• Speaking of false (or misleading) advertising, the recent changes to the Act now allow courts to impose penalties that are no longer limited to fixed (capped) amounts. From now on, whenever a judge must impose a penalty on a given business for this, (s)he may elect to set the penalty according either to what profit the business derived from its misdeed, or better yet, on a percentage (3%) of its annual global revenue. Do I have your attention now?
• Likewise, the recent changes also remove the cap on competition-related criminal penalties, instead providing that judges now have discretion under the Act as to the amount of penalties imposed on wrongdoers.
• Anti-poaching agreements between employers are now a big no-no, as an unacceptable constraint on the working conditions of Canadian employees by what amounts to a form of cartel. As to this, one has to admit, if you allow business to agree between them to refrain from hiring from competitors, you’re seriously limiting the prospects of employees working in that industry.

The changes at issue came into effect on June 22, 2022.