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Executive Summary
In Canada, the Competition Act was initially created in 1889 with the Predatory Pricing Statute arising in the mid-1930s. To date, there have been hundreds of claims of predatory pricing brought to the Director. However, very few have gone through an investigation and just a handful, were taken to the Courts.
One of the explanations for the small number of cases related to the act of predatory pricing, is the difficulty in proving that a firm has lowered their prices to "unreasonably low" in an attempt to drive their competition from staying or entering their market.
Predatory pricing should not be considered to be a rare occurrence just because of the minimal number of cases that are brought forward to the Attorney General. Rather, the act of predatory pricing should be more clearly defined or revised under the Competition Act.
Many studies and papers issued by the Competition Bureau and other institutions demonstrates that has been a significant amount of research in recent years with the intention of developing guidelines that will help avoid predators while improving enforcement policies.
Introduction
The Competition Act
"1.1 The purpose of this Act is to maintain and encourage competition in Canada in order to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy, in order to expand opportunities for Canadian participation in world markets while at the same time recognizing the role of foreign competition in Canada, in order to ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises have an equitable opportunity to participate in the Canadian economy and in order to provide consumers with competitive prices and product choices." < ...