Competition Act

Marginal note:Price maintenance

• 61 (1) No person who is engaged in the business of producing or supplying a product, who extends credit by way of credit cards or is otherwise engaged in a business that relates to credit cards, or who has the exclusive rights and privileges conferred by a patent, trade-mark, copyright, registered industrial design or registered integrated circuit topography, shall, directly or indirectly,

  • (a) by agreement, threat, promise or any like means, attempt to influence upward, or to discourage the reduction of, the price at which any other person engaged in business in Canada supplies or offers to supply or advertises a product within Canada; or

  • (b) refuse to supply a product to or otherwise discriminate against any other person engaged in business in Canada because of the low pricing policy of that other person.

• Marginal note:Exception

  (2) Subsection (1) does not apply where the person attempting to influence the conduct of another person and that other person are affiliated corporations or directors, agents, officers or employees of

  • (a) the same corporation, partnership or sole proprietorship, or

  • (b) corporations, partnerships or sole proprietorships that are affiliated,

  or where the person attempting to influence the conduct of another person and that other person are principal and agent.

• Marginal note:Suggested retail price

  (3) For the purposes of this section, a suggestion by a producer or supplier of a product of a resale price or minimum resale price in respect thereof, however arrived at, is, in the absence of proof that the person making the suggestion, in so doing, also made it clear to the person to whom the suggestion was made that he was under no obligation to accept the suggestion and would in no way suffer in his business relations with the person making the suggestion or with any other person if he failed to accept the suggestion, proof of an attempt to influence the person to whom the suggestion is made in accordance with the suggestion.

• Marginal note:Idem

  (4) For the purposes of this section, the publication by a supplier of a product, other than a retailer, of an advertisement that mentions a resale price for the product is an attempt to influence upward the selling price of any person into whose hands the product comes for resale unless the price is so expressed as to make it clear to any person to whose attention the advertisement comes that the product may be sold at a lower price.

• Marginal note:Exception

  (5) Subsections (3) and (4) do not apply to a price that is affixed or applied to a product or its package or container.

• Marginal note:Refusal to supply

  (6) No person shall, by threat, promise or any like means, attempt to induce a supplier, whether within or outside Canada, as a condition of his doing business with the supplier, to refuse to supply a product to a particular person or class of persons because of the low pricing policy of that person or class of persons.

• (7) and (8) [Repealed, R.S., 1985, c. 19 (2nd Supp.), s. 36]

• Marginal note:Offence and punishment

  (9) Every person who contravenes subsection (1) or (6) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable on conviction to a fine in the discretion of the court or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or to both.

• Marginal note:Where no unfavourable inference to be drawn

  (10) Where, in a prosecution under paragraph (1)(b), it is proved that the person charged refused or counselled the refusal to supply a product to any other person, no inference unfavourable to the person charged shall be drawn from that evidence if he satisfies the court that he and any one on whose report he depended believed on reasonable grounds

  • (a) that the other person was making a practice of using products supplied by the person charged as loss-leaders, that is to say, not for the purpose of making a profit thereon but for purposes of advertising;

  • (b) that the other person was making a practice of using products supplied by the person charged not for the purpose of selling the products at a profit but for the purpose of attracting customers to his store in the hope of selling them other products;

  • (c) that the other person was making a practice of engaging in misleading advertising in respect of products supplied by the person charged; or

  • (d) that the other person made a practice of not providing the level of servicing that purchasers of the products might reasonably expect from the other person.