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Annual Report of the Commissioner of Competition for the year ending March 31, 2004


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Statistical Data

Bureau Operations

In 2003-2004, the operating budget for the Bureau was $37.9 million including $8.9 million in user fees.In addition, the Bureau received $7.1 million in temporary adjustments to meet additional operational requirements. A major portion of the budget, $28.6 million was allocated to salaries for 393 authorized full time staff, consisting of 25 executives, 14 economists, 219 competition law officers, and 135 employees carrying out informatics, administrative services and support functions. Temporary funding has also allowed the Bureau to staff 47 new positions consisting of 30 competition law officers, 2 economists and 15 employees carrying out support functions.

The Bureau has administrative responsibility for collecting fines imposed by the courts. During 2003-2004, $7.5 million in fines was imposed.

Table 1

**Selected activities of the Competition Bureau**
Number of complaints, examinations, inquiries and advisory opinions	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04
Total complaints (Competition Act)	16,570	13,871	19,825	18,954
Total complaints (Textile Labelling Act, Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, and the Precious Metals Marking Act)	135	206	186	145
Examinations (Competition Act)	711	694	718	586
Examinations/Inspections (Labelling Acts)	433	184	238	63
Applications for inquiries under section 9	8	8	8	5
Inquiries in progress at year end	35	54	84	80
Written advisory opinions	40	26	46	26
Disposition of inquiries
Inquiries formally discontinued	11	5	11	16
Matters referred to the Attorney General of Canada	14	10	13	12
Matters referred where further action is not warranted	0	1	0	0
Prosecutions or other proceedings commenced	14	13	6	6
Applications to the Competition Tribunal	6	10	6	4
-Mergers	3	7	5	4
-Other reviewable practices	3	3	1	0
Representatives before regulatory bodies	13	5	9	12

Table 2

**Civil Matters — selected activities**
Number of complaints, examinations and inquiries	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04
Total complaints/information contacts	618	1,260	780	805
Examinations commenced (two or more days of review)	43	42	29	32
Applications for inquiries under section 9 (six resident application to the Commissioner for inquiry)	4	4	5	4
Inquiries in progress at year end	11	12	5	4
Written advisory opinions	3	4	4	1
Disposition of inquiries
Inquiries resolved by alternative case resolution	3	2	2	1
Applications to the Competition Tribunal	1	1	1	0
Discontinuances	6	5	5	9
Interventions
CRTC	4	2	2	3
Provincial	3	2	2	1
CITT	3	0	2	1
Policy work	3	1	3	7

Table 3

**Criminal matters — selected activities**
Number of complaints, examinations and inquiries	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04
Total complaints/information requests	966	453	634	1280
Examinations commenced	57	29	59	33
Applications for inquiries under section 9	3	3	2	0
Inquiries in progress at year end	24	26	33	45
Disposition of inquiries
Matters referred to the Attorney General of Canada	8	5	4	10
Matters where charges were laid	8	3	4	6
Matters where Attorney General declined to proceed or withdrew charges (may include matters referred during previous years)	0	0	0	0
Matters before the Courts (may include matters referred during previous years)	8	7	6	5
Disposition of prosecutions (findings of guilt, guilty pleas, acquittals, stay of proceedings, orders of prohibition - may include matters referred during previous years)	14	3	8	6
Other activities
Examinations resolved by information contacts	12	5	6	8
Written advisory opinions	2	1	7	2
Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) requests	1	8	2	0
Searches	5	5	4	2

Table 4

**Merger Examinations**
Examinations Commenced¹	202
Notifiable Transactions	53
Advance Ruling Certificate Requests²	159

^{¹ Includes notifiable transactions, advance ruling
certificates and examinations commenced for other reasons, but not ongoing
examinations from the previous fiscal year.

² Total number of notifiable transactions with advance ruling
certificate requests exceeds the number of examinations commenced because in
many instances a long or short form notification was filed along with a request
for an advance ruling certificate.}

**Merger Examinations**
Examinations Concluded¹	215
No Issue Under the Act	202
Advance Ruling Certificates Issued²	138
Agreed Remedies	6
Consent Orders/ Registered Consent Agreements³	3
Contested Proceedings⁴ ^(A)	1
Parties Abandoned Proposed Mergers in Whole or in Part as a Direct Result of the Commissioner's Position	1
Proposed Mergers Abandoned For Other Reasons	5

^{1. If a transaction has a notification as well as an advance
ruling certificate, it is only counted once. This number also includes advance
ruling certificates and matters that have been concluded or withdrawn before
the Competition Tribunal.

2. Advance Ruling Certificates Issued are a subset of
the Posing No Issue Under the Act category and have only been counted
once in Examinations Concluded.

3. Consent Orders and Registered Consent Agreements are a
subset of the With Agreed Remedies category and have only been counted
once in Total Examinations Concluded.

4. Year completed.

(A) Canadian Waste Services and Browning-Ferris: Supreme Court
dismissed Canadian Waste Services' leave to appeal with costs (January 2004).}


Total Examinations During the Year	229
Total Examinations Concluded	215
Examinations Ongoing at Year End	14
Advisory Opinions Issued	0
Section 92 Matters Before the Tribunal and the Courts¹	4
Ongoing at Year End	0
Concluded² or Withdrawn ^(B)	4

^{¹ Includes applications for consent orders and consent
agreements.

² "Concluded" means that the Competition Tribunal or the
courts issued an order or decision, and there were no further appeals.

^(B) Cases concluded: Canadian Waste/Browning-Ferris,
Pfizer/Pharmacia, Rona/Réno-Dépôt, Canfor/Slocan.}


Other Tribunal Proceedings¹	1
Ongoing at Year-End ^(C)	1
Concluded² or Withdrawn	0

^{¹ Includes section 106 applications.

² "Concluded" means that the Competition Tribunal or the
courts issued an order or decision, and there were no further appeals.

^(C) Waste: section 106 application.}

Table 5

**Fair Business Practices Branch — selected activities**
Matters: examinations and inquiries	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04
Total complaints received	14,986	12,364	18,597	17,014
Total complaints received (Competition Act)	14,851	12,158	18,411	16,869
Total complaints received (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	135	206	186	145
Total inquiries in progress at year end (Competition Act)	not available	not available	46	31
Inquiries commenced during year (Competition Act)	12	16	27	14
Applications for inquiries under s.9 (Competition Act)	1	1	1	1
Disposition of matters
Completed examinations/inquiries (Competition Act)	238	295	336	292
Completed examinations/inspections (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	433	184	238	63
Alternative Case Resolution (Competition Act)	3	0	67	47
Alternative Case Resolution (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	122	124	104	10
Inquiries formally discontinued (Competition Act)
Total inquiries discontinued	2	1	6	7
Inquiries discontinued - resolved by way of alternative case resolution	1	0	1	5
Inquiries discontinued - no further action required	1	1	5	2
Matter referred to the Attorney General and charges Laid (Competition Act, Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)
Total matters referred to the Attorney General	6	7	9	2
Referred to the Attorney General of Canada (Competition Act)	5	5	8	2
Referred to the Attorney General of Canada (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	1	2	1	0
Total matters in which charges been laid (may include matters referred previous years)	6	6	11	3
Criminal matters where criminal Charges were laid (Competition Act)	6	4	10	not available
Matters where criminal charges were laid (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	1	2	1	not available
Criminal Prosecutions concluded (Competition Act, Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act) (May include matters referred to Attorney General during previous years)
Total convictions	3	5	6	1
Convictions (Competition Act)	3	3	5	1
Convictions (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	not available	2	1	0
Total non-convictions	0	0	0	0
Non-convictions (Competition Act)	0	0	0	0
Non-convictions (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	0	0	0	0
Civil proceedings (Competition Act)
Consent agreements under s.74.12	2	1	3	5
Contested applications under s.74.1	1	1	1	not available
Orders issued under s.74.1	0	0	1	0
Temporary orders under s.74.11	0	0	0	0
Application Filed	1	1	1	0
Written Opinions
Written opinions provided (Competition Act)	33	19	35	23
Total fines and administrative monetary penalties ($)
Total (Competition Act)	$1,000,000	$95,000	$860,000	$1,950,000
Criminal fines (Competition Act)	$1,000,000	$95,000	$630,000	$125,000
Civil administrative monetary penalties (Competition Act)	0	0	$230,000	$1,825,000
Total fines (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	$3000	$7,500	$4,250	0