In my new Canadian Lawyer column today, I discuss the whistleblower provisions of the Competition Act and ask whether rewarding whistleblowers would strengthen competition law enforcement in Canada. Below is an excerpt with a link to the full column.
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With the federal government’s new budget anticipated soon, infrastructure spending is once again on the minds of many Canadians. In the government’s last budget, it pledged to spend $120 billion over 10 years. Government spending means more procurement, which in turn can mean more bid rigging or other competition law issues among suppliers.
To tackle potential procurement-related competition law violations, the federal Competition Bureau has increased its efforts to educate government bodies on how to detect and deter anti-competitive practices. The Bureau has also enhanced its efforts to enforce the criminal provisions of the Competition Act.
Some of the bureau’s recent criminal enforcement initiatives include anti-bid-rigging presentations to public procurement officials, a new hotline for tipsters to report fraud and bid rigging and working to develop and adopt data-screening mechanisms (algorithms) to help procurement agencies detect competitors that have illegally co-ordinated bid submissions.
The Bureau has also been working on increasing awareness of the whistleblower provisions of the Competition Act, including launching a “Whistleblowing Initiative” several years ago and highlighting whistleblower protections in its enforcement policy announcements.
The whistleblower sections of the Competition Act (s. 66.1 and 66.2) protect the identities of people who report competition law offences to the bureau and prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who, in good faith and on reasonable belief, report potential competition law offences. Section 425.1 of the Criminal Code provides similar protections to employees who report federal or provincial offences.
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For my full column see: here.
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