Abuse of joint dominance in Canadian competition policy

The Canadian Competition Bureau has recently offered new draft guidelines on the abuse of dominance that, in the area of joint dominance, depart from the existing guidelines in two ways: first, the bureau no longer considers as a potential abuse of joint dominance the adoption of practices that facilitate supra-competitive pricing in an oligopoly; second, while in the past some form of explicit coordination was required for an assessment of joint dominance, the bureau now considers parallel abusive conduct by jointly dominant firms as potentially infringing the abuse provisions. The first change, which we attribute to case law rather than to the bureau, is undesirable. The adoption of facilitating practices can lessen competition, and is practically remediable. Facilitating practices should be considered potential abuses of joint dominance. On the other hand, the second change is sensible: oligopolists may profitably adopt exclusionary practices in parallel without coordination. Parallel exclusionary practices may lessen competition even when no single firm has a dominant market share, and this problem is amenable to a practical remedy. The bureau's new approach is welcome on this front.