www.lexpert.ca/usguide | LEXPERT • June 2019 | 57
think he likes the casework, and he'll be
less focused on internal institutional issues
like organizational structure" than was his
predecessor, who revamped it.
With eight years of experience at the
Competition Bureau under his belt, Bo-
swell is well known to the competition
bar, and "with his prosecutorial back-
ground, there may be some increased fo-
cus on criminal matters, but also a strong
impetus to bring cases in the digital econ-
omy" forward, says Anita Banicevic, also
a partner in the Competition, Antitrust
& Foreign Investment practice in Da-
vies's Toronto office.
e Competition Bureau has accom-
sioner who has a stronger enforcement
background." e digital economy may
be an area of increased scrutiny going
forward, he agrees.
e digital economy involves an inter-
play between Competition and Privacy
law, notes Brian Facey, a partner in Blake,
Cassels & Graydon LLP in Toronto. "A
lot of companies are collecting it," and
want data on customers and competitors
in order to compete, he says. "ey don't
want to share it, but competition law likes
sharing of data. at will be a very big is-
sue that the new Commissioner will have
to grapple with" owing to the privacy issues
in maintaining data, he adds.
e Competition Bureau will soon ap-
point a Digital Enforcement officer to ad-
vise on enforcement activity and cases in
the digital sector, similar to what other ju-
risdictions have done, and the Bureau has
already noted areas of interest, such as the
intersection of privacy, data and anti-trust,
says Banicevic.
"So, are the privacy protections you
say you have being put in place? at's a
new area of focus, and they're using what
has traditionally been provisions used for
advertising and other types of representa-
tions and applying them to the privacy
sphere," she says.
Mergers are expected to continue to
be closely scrutinized. Facey predicts that
the Competition Bureau will continue to
rely on the pre-merger notification obli-
gations on parties as well as other tools
at the Commissioner's disposal to inves-
tigate non-notifiable deals. Over the next
six months, he anticipates that all eyes
will be turned to Commissioner Boswell
to see how he balances consumer and
business interests in allowing consolida-
tions in the marketplace.
ere's been some pushback of late from
the legal and business communities, says
Addy, notably over charges that deal merg-
er processes have been taking too long.
e Bureau has internal key performance
indicators for how long a merger process
should take to be approved, and statisti-
cally, he says, the Bureau has been slipping
and not meeting its internal guidelines.
"I hope to see [the Commissioner]
spending time trying to address the time-
liness of performance or timeliness of re-
view," he says.
plished important enforcement practices
in reviews and assessments, in particular
work around Big Data and the technol-
og y sector, says Neil Campbell, a partner
at McMillan LLP in Toronto. "ey have
looked at some cases in these areas, but
there's not an extensive track record of
actual enforcement," he says. Campbell
would contrast Canada's Competition
Bureau with those of Germany and other
jurisdictions in Europe, where agencies
are getting "very vigorous" in enforce-
ment activity in a range of digital econ-
omy markets. However, "we're starting to
see the Bureau go from thinking about it
to more enforcement, with a Commis-
