The Competition Bureau recently released its annual plan for 2025-26, outlining its priorities at a time when Canada is navigating rapid shifts in trade, market dynamics, and technology.
The Bureau’s priorities build on its work over the past couple of years as the Bureau continues to implement its Strategic Vision and respond to the substantial Competition Act amendments made since 2022. The Bureau also wants to leverage Canada’s presidency of the G7 to spearhead international efforts to advance competition and enforcement policy.
Many of the Bureau’s 2025-26 priorities remain the same as those of 2024-25, but with some notable additions that largely align with the priorities of the new federal government.
Below are highlights from the Bureau’s 2025-26 priorities:
- Sector-specific focus. The Bureau has identified several sectors of focus this year. Unsurprisingly, many align closely with the stated priorities of the newly elected federal government:
- Housing. New this year, the Bureau will focus on enforcement (i.e., anti-competitive conduct and mergers) in the housing sector. Supporting this, the Bureau has been active in this sector over the past several months. It has been scrutinizing rental housing transactions more closely than has historically been the case, including the purchase of buildings by commercial landlords.
- Artificial intelligence. Also new this year, the Bureau will focus on enforcement in the artificial intelligence sector. It will also seek to improve its own capacity using artificial intelligence.
- Food. The Bureau will continue its focus on enforcement in the food sector, prioritizing investigations of anti-competitive conduct and mergers that affect consumer prices.
- Deceptive marketing. Unsurprisingly, the Bureau will continue to prioritize its enforcement activity on greenwashing and drip pricing, which were both identified as priorities in 2024-25. The Bureau has been very active in these areas over the past couple of years, and has most recently commenced legal action against Canada’s Wonderland for allegedly failing to disclose mandatory fixed fees (i.e., drip pricing).
- Consumer data. The Bureau will also continue its focus on the competitive aspects of consumer data, including data portability and promoting policies that give consumers more power over their data.
- Algorithmic pricing. The Bureau will be launching a consultation and researching the use of algorithmic pricing, to examine its impact on competition and consumers.
- Private enforcement. Anticipating the Competition Act amendments that will expand private access to the Competition Tribunal effective June 20, 2025, the Bureau plans to work to strengthen private enforcement through “monitoring cases, updating guidance, and intervening on key legal issues to support greater competition.” It seems this priority is already underway, as we have seen the Commissioner of Competition intervene to make submissions on the interpretation of the leave test in an abuse of dominance case brought by JAMP Pharma Corporation against its competitor Janssen Inc.
- Regulatory barriers and interprovincial trade. The Bureau will continue to advocate for pro-competitive government policies and has highlighted the need to address regulatory barriers to competition, including interprovincial trade barriers.
- Market studies. The Bureau plans to launch a new market study this year but has not indicated in what industry. In 2024, the Competition Act was amended to formally give the Bureau powers that enable it to conduct market studies, including seeking judicial orders to compel the disclosure of information, documents, or data. Most recently, the Bureau has undertaken market studies in the grocery and airline industries. It has also recently published additional information about how it conducts market studies.
Key takeaways
While the Bureau’s annual plan lists many of the same priorities and actions as in prior years, it is sending a clear signal that it intends to be a more aggressive, proactive enforcer than has been previously the case.
Buoyed by recent enforcer-friendly changes to the Competition Act and a boost in funding for the Bureau, Commissioner Boswell has clearly indicated we have entered into a “new era of competition enforcement in Canada.”
Companies doing business in Canada should anticipate that the Bureau is looking for opportunities to flex its enforcement muscles. This means they need to ensure they understand the impact of recent Competition Act changes on their operations and proactively assess whether they need to change any of their current business practices or compliance policies. Additionally, companies contemplating transactions (both in industries the Bureau is focussing on and more generally) will want to assess the potential competition law risk at an earlier stage in the strategic process, to account for the impact of last year’s changes to the Competition Act merger review provisions, which have impacted the complexity and length of merger reviews.
The authors would like to thank Thomas Broccolini, summer student, for his contribution to preparing this legal update.
