The Competition Bureau failed to convince the Federal Court of Appeal that the Competition Tribunal’s decision in favor of the Rogers–Shaw merger was legally incorrect or would reduce competition.
after the decision three hour affair made by the Canadian competition watchdog, arguing that Tribunal’s decision might have been different if the Rogers–Shaw merger had been examined independently of Freedom Mobile’s precondition sale to Videotron, which was taken as a remedy for competition concerns.
Rogers and Shaw were not required to present their closing arguments before the verdict was delivered.
The federal court said that the tribunal’s decision tells us that, from a competition point of view, this case is far from a close and that even if it is wrong in narrow legal points, “we [Federal Court] Not convinced that the result would have been or could have been different.
The court said there was no need for the matter to go back to the Competition Tribunal for a further decision, as it “could cause delay, potentially substantial, in a transaction which is genuinely anti-competitive, and in the public interest, is to die for.”
In addition, the federal court rejected TechSavvy appeals to the CRTC, produced by the Bureau as additional evidence. “The fact that a few days before, but months after the disinvestment became known, someone has started proceedings before some other administrative body, it has nothing to do with our task to decide whether the Competition Tribunal committed a reversible error in passing the order.”
