On January 22, 2020, Josephine Palumbo, the Deputy Commissioner of the Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate at the Canadian Competition Bureau (the “Bureau”), spoke at the Canadian Institute’s 26th Annual Advertising and Marketing Law Conference. During her remarks, titled Honest Advertising in the Digital Age, Ms. Palumbo identified the Bureau’s current enforcement priorities as they relate to advertising and marketing in the digital economy. Among other things, these priorities include (a) influencer marketing; (b)…

On January 22, 2020, Josephine Palumbo, the Deputy Commissioner of the Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate at the Canadian Competition Bureau (the “Bureau”), spoke at the Canadian Institute’s 26th Annual Advertising and Marketing Law Conference. During her remarks, titled Honest Advertising in the Digital Age, Ms. Palumbo identified the Bureau’s current enforcement priorities as they relate to advertising and marketing in the digital economy. Among other things, these priorities include (a) influencer marketing; (b) fake…

On January 22, 2020, Josephine Palumbo, the Deputy Commissioner of the Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate at the Canadian Competition Bureau (the “Bureau”), spoke at the Canadian Institute’s 26th Annual Advertising and Marketing Law Conference. During her remarks, titled Honest Advertising in the Digital Age, Ms. Palumbo identified the Bureau’s current enforcement priorities as they relate to advertising and marketing in the digital economy. Among other things, these priorities include: influencer marketing; fake online reviews;…

Pre-merger exchanges of information can create competition risk. Companies considering mergers or acquisitions legitimately need access to detailed information about the other party’s business in order to negotiate the deal, engage in due diligence and implement the transaction. While non-competitively sensitive can (subject to any commercial concerns) be freely exchanged, care needs to be exercised when exchanging competitively sensitive information, such as current and future price information, strategic plans and costs. This is especially true…

As mentioned in our prior blog post titled Commissioner Points to More Active Enforcement, Greater Transparency and Refined Approach to Efficiencies Defence, the Commissioner of Competition announced during his keynote speech at the Canadian Bar Association’s Competition Law Spring Conference on May 7, 2019 that the Competition Bureau intended to release for public comment a draft model timing agreement for merger reviews where the parties raise the efficiencies defence. The draft agreement was released …

Over the past week, the Commissioner of Competition has made a number of comments relevant to big tech companies and the digital economy. These comments were made on a panel at the Data Forum Discussing Competition Policy in the Digital Era in Ottawa on May 30th, at a conference hosted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris on June 3rd and during an interview with CBC News. The key comments are summarized…