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Annual Report of the Commissioner of Competition for the year ending March 31, 2003


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Statistical Data

Bureau Operations

In 2002-2003, the operating budget for the Bureau was $31.6 million including $6.4 million in user fees.In addition, the Bureau received $11.1 million in temporary adjustments to meet additional operational requirements.A major portion of the budget, $28.4 million was allocated to salaries for 383 authorized full time staff, consisting of 23 executives, 14 economists, 221 competition law officers, and 125 employees carrying out informatics, administrative services and support functions.

The Bureau has administrative responsibility for collecting fines imposed by the courts. During 2002-2003, $5,934,750 in fines was imposed.

Table 1

**Selected activities of the Competition Bureau**
	1999-00	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03
Number of complaints, examinations, inquiries and advisory opinions
Total complaints (Competition Act)	13,803	16,570	13,871	19,825
Total complaints (Textile Labelling Act, Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, and the Precious Metals Marking Act)	n.a.	135	206	186
Examinations (Competition Act)	655	711	694	718
Examinations/Inspections (Labelling Acts)	2,316	433	184	238
Applications for inquiries under section 9	13	8	8	8
Inquiries in progress at year end	48	35	54	84
Written advisory opinions	51	40	26	46
Disposition of inquiries
Inquiries formally discontinued	18	11	5	11
Matters referred to the Attorney General of Canada	12	14	10	13
Matters referred where further action is not warranted	1	0	1	0
Prosecutions or other proceedings commenced	9	14	13	6
Applications to the Competition Tribunal	4	6	10	6
-Mergers	3	3	7	5
-Other reviewable practices	1	3	3	1
Representatives before regulatory bodies	7	13	5	9

Table 2

**Civil Matters — selected activities**
	1999-00	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03
Number of complaints, examinations and inquiries
Total complaints/information contacts	613	618	1,260	780
Examinations commenced (two or more days of review)	43	43	42	29
Applications for inquiries under section 9 (six resident application to the Commissioner for inquiry)	5	4	4	5
Inquiries in progress at year end	10	11	12	5
Written advisory opinions	0	3	4	4
Disposition of inquiries
Inquiries resolved by alternative case resolution	5	3	2	2
Applications to the Competition Tribunal	0	1	1	1
Discontinuances	5	6	5	5
Interventions
CRTC	2	4	2	2
Provincial	3	3	2	2
CITT	1	3	0	2
Policy work	1	3	1	3

Table 3

**Criminal matters — selected activities**
	1999-00	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03
Number of complaints, examinations and inquiries
Total complaints/information requests	1,945	966	453	634
Examinations commenced	37	57	29	59
Applications for inquiries under section 9	4	3	3	2
Inquiries in progress at year end	22	24	26	33
Disposition of inquiries
Matters referred to the Attorney General of Canada	9	8	5	4
Matters where charges were laid	6	8	3	4
Matters where Attorney General declined to proceed or withdrew charges (may include matters referred during previous years)	1	0	0	0
Matters before the Courts (may include matters referred during previous years)	7	8	7	6
Disposition of prosecutions (findings of guilt, guilty pleas, acquittals, stay of proceedings, orders of prohibition - may include matters referred during previous years)	21	14	3	8
Other activities
Examinations resolved by information contacts	6	12	5	6
Written advisory opinions	7	2	1	7
Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) requests	1	1	8	2
Searches	5	5	5	4

Table 4

**Merger Examinations**
	2002-03
Examinations Commenced
Includes notifiable transactions, advance ruling certificates and examinations commenced for other reasons, but not ongoing examinations from the previous fiscal year	279
Total number of notifiable transactions together with advance ruling certificate requests exceed 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
Notifiable Transactions	85
Advance Ruling Certificate Requests	224
Examinations Concluded¹
Posing No Issue Under the Act	257
Of Which Advance Ruling Certificates Issued	163
With Agreed Remedies²	6
Of Which Consent Orders/ Registered Consent Agreements	3
Through Contested Proceedings³	1
Parties Abandoned Proposed Mergers in Whole or in Part as a Direct Result of the Commissioner's Position	0
Proposed Mergers Abandoned For Other Reasons	3
Total Examinations Concluded⁴ Includes advance ruling certificates and matters that have been concluded or withdrawn before the Competition Tribunal	267
Examinations Ongoing at Year End	27
Total Examinations During the Year	294
Advisory Opinions Issued	0
Section 92 Matters Before the Tribunal and the Courts Includes applications for consent orders and consent agreements	5
Ongoing at Year End	1
Concluded⁵ or Withdrawn	4

¹ If a transaction has a notification as well as an advance ruling certificate, it is only counted once.

² This category replaces the With Pre-closing Restructuring and With Post-closing Restructuring and Undertakings categories f previous annual reports.

³ Year completed.

⁴ Consent Orders and Registered Consent Agreements are a subset of the With Agreed Remedies category and have only been counted once in the Total Examinations Concluded row. Advance Ruling Certificates Issued are a subset of the Posing No Issue Under the Act category and have only been counted once in the Total Examinations Concluded row.

⁵ Concluded means that the Competition Tribunal or the courts issued an order or decision, and there were no further appeals.

Correction: In the fiscal year 1999-2000, the number of transactions Posing No Issue Under the Act should have been 328 with the removal of asset securitizations, not 392 as reported.

Table 5

**Fair Business Practices Branch — selected activities**
Matters: examinations and inquiries	1999-00	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03
Total complaints received	11,240	14,986	12,364	18,597
Total complaints received (Competition Act)	11,240	14,851	12,158	18,411
Total complaints received (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	not available	135	206	186
Total inquiries in progress at year end (Competition Act)	not available	not available	not available	46
Inquiries commenced during year (Competition Act)	13	12	16	26
Applications for inquiries under s.9 (Competition Act)	4	1	1	1
Disposition of matters
Completed examinations/inquiries (Competition Act)	140	238	295	336
Completed examinations/inspections (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	2,316	433	184	238
Alternative Case Resolution (Competition Act)	9	3	0	67
Alternative Case Resolution (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	not available	122	124	104
Inquiries formally discontinued (Competition Act)
Total inquiries discontinued	4	2	1	6
Inquiries discontinued - resolved by way of alternative case resolution	2	1	0	1
Inquiries discontinued - no further action required	2	1	1	5
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	3	6	7	9
Referred to the Attorney General of Canada (Competition Act)	3	5	5	8
Referred to the Attorney General of Canada (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	0	1	2	1
Total matters in which charges been laid (may include matters referred previous years)	2	7	6	11
Criminal matters where criminal Charges were laid (Competition Act)	2	6	4	10
Matters where criminal charges were laid (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	0	1	2	1
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	4	3	6
Convictions (Competition Act)	3	3	1	5
Convictions (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	0	1	2	1
Total non-convictions	1	1	0	0
Non-convictions (Competition Act)	1	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	0	2	1	3
Contested applications under s.74.1	0	1	1	1
Orders issued under s.74.1	0	0	0	1
Temporary orders under s.74.11	1	0	0	0
Written Opinions
Written opinions provided (Competition Act)	39	33	19	35
Total fines and administrative monetary penalties ($)
Total (Competition Act)	$1,190,000	$1,000,000	$95,000	$860,000
Criminal fines (Competition Act)	$1,190,000	$1,000,000	$95,000	$630,000
Civil administrative monetary penalties (Competition Act)	0	0	0	$230,000
Total fines (Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, Textile Labelling Act, Precious Metals Marking Act)	0	$3000	$7,500	$4,250