Canada competition bureau sets enforcement agenda around resilience and market competition

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Canada competition bureau agenda

Highlights

Canada's Competition Bureau, empowered by recent amendments to the Competition Act, aims to enhance enforcement on wage-fixing, mergers, market studies, and anticompetitive conduct.
In August, the bureau successfully halted Nortera's acquisition of B&G Foods’ Canadian Green Giant and Le Sieur business, citing reduced competition for canned and frozen vegetables.
The bureau is intensifying reviews across the agriculture and agri-food sector, which employed 2.3 million people and accounted for 7% of GDP in 2024, focusing on entry barriers and supply chain competition.

Enforcement priorities and policy message

As reported by Canada.ca, Pratt used a speech to the Canadian Bar Association Competition Law Fall Conference to argue that competition policy should remain central to Canada's economic strategy rather than give way to calls for larger national champions. She said resilience should be understood not only as the ability to recover from shocks, but also as the capacity to adapt, redirect resources and emerge stronger as technologies, trade patterns and business models change.

Pratt said Parliament has recently strengthened the Competition Act through major amendments and that the Competition Bureau is now focused on converting those added powers into practical results. She said the bureau is continuing to issue guidance after changes to the law, including consultations over the past three years on wage-fixing and no-poaching, merger review, environmental claims, market studies, anticompetitive conduct, cartels and private access to the Competition Tribunal.

She outlined three broad areas for enforcement, preventing markets from becoming less competitive, making conditions more competitive and protecting Canadians' confidence in how markets function. Pratt said clear rules and predictable enforcement can also support investment by giving businesses more certainty about how the law will be applied.

Cases, sector focus and economic impact

To illustrate the bureau's current approach, Pratt pointed to its August challenge to Nortera's proposed acquisition of B&G Foods' Canadian Green Giant and Le Sieur business. She said the bureau concluded the deal would likely reduce competition in canned and frozen vegetables supplied to grocery retailers across Canada, and noted the transaction was later abandoned after an interim injunction issued in September.

Pratt also cited a recent consent agreement with Kalibrate over its retail gasoline market-intelligence service, saying the bureau found certain station-level data could increase the risk of coordination among retailers. She added that the bureau is also targeting structural barriers to entry, including property controls in grocery, referencing an agreement reached earlier this month with Empire, the owner of Sobeys and other banners, to limit their use.

Beyond individual cases, Pratt said the bureau is examining competition across Canada's food supply chain after earlier work on grocery retail. She said the agriculture and agri-food sector employed 2.3 million people in 2024 and represented about 7% of GDP, making it a significant area for competition analysis tied to affordability, entry barriers and broader economic resilience.

Pratt also said artificial intelligence will test competition enforcement as algorithms increasingly shape commercial decisions. While acknowledging concerns around safety and security, she said those issues should not become a basis for shielding incumbents or allowing cooperation that weakens competitive markets.

In our earlier article on Malaysia’s review of enforcement for foreign products and businesses entering the domestic market, we explained how the government aimed to tighten coordination to preserve fair competition as cross-border e-commerce expands. The piece also covered plans to strengthen the digital trade framework—such as work on an e-Commerce Bill—and initiatives to support local SMEs through coordinated promotion and improved market access.

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