Widow looking for answers after Quebec man dies in Texas Ironman competition
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Lax merger laws in Canada underestimate the harm to competition caused by mergers and overestimate their benefits, a new report says.
Gaps in Canada's merger laws have failed to prevent the kind of acquisitions that allow big firms to "extinguish competitive threats and entrench their dominance," according to the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
Canada has fallen "way behind" other jurisdictions such as the United States, said Keldon Bester, a fellow with the centre and the author of the report.
He compared Canada's existing regime to a set of faulty brakes. "Our laws today are like brakes on a car going downhill. We know we're going downhill, but we'd like to go there a little bit slower," he said in an interview.
The "permissiveness" of merger laws is especially concerning in the context of a growing digital economy, which is fraught with unique challenges, his report adds.
Mergers, which are transactions that see two companies combined into one, can be subject to review by Canada's competition watchdog to determine whether they would be harmful to competition.
However, since the introduction of the Competition Act in 1986, the Competition Bureau has only ever challenged 18 mergers. And what's especially alarming, the report says, is that the bureau has never won a challenge on final judgement.
A recent poll suggests Canadians are concerned about the state of affairs.
According to an Ipsos survey conducted in January, 88 per cent of respondents agreed that more business competition is needed "because it's too easy for big businesses to take advantage of Canadians."
The same proportion agreed that more competition between businesses could lead to more choice and lower prices for consumers.
The survey of 1,001 Canadians aged 18 and older was conducted between Jan. 14 and 17. Ipsos says its online results are weighted and are comparable to a traditional poll with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
One of the issues with the Competition Bureau is the threshold at which it must be notified of a transaction, the CIGI report says.
Under the Competition Act, parties to a proposed merger must notify the Competition Bureau if a transaction meets certain financial thresholds. But those thresholds do not include the value of the transaction itself, the report says.
That's in contrast to the U.S., where the Federal Trade Commission is already notified of mergers that exceed a certain transaction value.
Early this year, the commission and the U.S. Justice Department announced a joint public inquiry to modernize merger guidelines so as to "better detect and prevent anti-competitive deals."
By comparison, Canada is "way behind," Bester said.
Another problem with the Competition Bureau is that "the bar to intervene in a merger is quite high," added Bester, a researcher who studies competition and monopoly powers in Canada.
That's because current laws take into consideration the increased efficiency that may come from a merger, he said. Harms from reduced competition are permitted if the proposed merger will lead to cost savings that are deemed to be greater.
There's also a bias against blocking mergers outright, he said.
Instead, the laws favour negotiated agreements that include concessions or remedies that would address some of the competition concerns. These remedies don't have to fully address the reduction in competition that would be caused by the merger, the report says.
The report suggests several changes to Canada's merger laws.
The recommendations include expanding the range of transactions the Competition Bureau is notified of, extending the time window it has to block a harmful merger and changing the criteria used for assessing whether a transaction should be blocked.
The most high-profile proposed merger in Canada right now is arguably Rogers's proposed takeover of Shaw, a prospective transaction valued at $26 billion.
Bester said that if Canada had stronger merger laws, the Rogers-Shaw deal would have automatically been "dead in the water" given the lack of competition in the telecommunications industry.
"If we had stronger merger laws, this merger wouldn't be proposed in the first place."
Nonetheless, Canada's competition watchdog has been trying to block the deal, arguing that it will substantially lessen competition and lead to higher phone bills.
Rogers and Shaw are expected to appear before the Competition Tribunal in November, where they will argue in favour of the transaction.
Although the federal Liberals have made recent amendments to other parts of the Competition Act, Canada hasn't touched merger laws -- a problem that Bester blames on a "legal and financial apparatus" that benefits from their permissiveness.
Banks, law firms and private equity groups "are interested in very loose merger laws because that increases their bottom line," said Bester.
"We really haven't done anything today on the merger side, so Canada really is behind the ball."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 1, 2022.
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
The world is seeing a near breakdown of international law amid flagrant rule-breaking in Gaza and Ukraine, multiplying armed conflicts, the rise of authoritarianism and huge rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar, Amnesty International warned Wednesday as it published its annual report.
A photographer who worked for Megan Thee Stallion said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that he was forced to watch her have sex, was unfairly fired soon after and was abused as her employee.
Facing pushback from physicians and businesspeople over the coming increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland are standing by their plan to target Canada's highest earners.
The Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would force TikTok's China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under the threat of a ban, a contentious move by U.S. lawmakers that's expected to face legal challenges.
People living near a wildfire burning about 15 kilometres southwest of Peace River are being told to evacuate their homes.
The U.S. Senate has passed US$95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden after months of delays and contentious debate over how involved the United States should be in foreign wars.
A Winnipeg man said a single date gone wrong led to years of criminal harassment, false arrests, stress and depression.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.