Bread price-fixing scandal puts focus on Competition Bureau’s immunity program
CALGARY — The national bread price-fixing scandal has sparked heated debate over the Competition Bureau’s immunity granting program, with a law enforcement expert defending the practice and a government accountability critic arguing it just lets offenders get away with crimes.
Bakery wholesaler George Weston Ltd. and subsidiary grocer Loblaw Companies Ltd. were granted immunity from prosecution in return for their co-operation in the price-fixing investigation under a long-standing bureau program that grants freedom from sentencing to the first party in a cartel who volunteers to co-operate.
According to court documents released Wednesday, the bureau alleges that senior officers at George Weston and rival Canada Bread Co. Ltd. communicated to raise prices in lockstep, then met with five national bread retailers who agreed to implement the higher prices.
“If you have an effective whistleblower program and you have the resources to be doing effective best-practice inspections and audits, then the immunity program just amounts to letting one of the violators off the hook. And that’s a bad idea,” Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, said in an interview.