Why was Canada’s old conspiracy law changed?
Canada’s new U.S.-style criminal conspiracy regime is meant to make the enforcement of hard-core criminal cartel activity easier – i.e., bare price-fixing, market division and output restriction agreements between competitors and potential competitors – by removing the former competitive effects test. At the same time, the new rules are meant to allow a more detailed analysis of non-hard core agreements between competitors, such as joint venture and strategic alliance agreements (i.e., where a more detailed analysis of the potential effects on a market may be warranted). In short, the new regime is meant to make catching clearly anti-competitive agreements easier while allowing for a more detailed review of agreements that may be competitively neutral or pro-competitive.
