Meet Daniel Jenson, Major Case Director at Competition Bureau Canada, with the third of four episodes created to help us understand the laws governing and protecting retailers. In this episode, Daniel unpacks antitrust and abuse of dominance for us, providing us with a specific case study to illustrate both the concept and the tradecraft of the Bureau.
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Meet Daniel Jenson, Major Case Director at Competition Bureau Canada, with the third of four episodes created to help us understand the laws governing and protecting retailers. If you want to learn more about the Competition Bureau and how it operates, tune into the series' first episode back in October. In this episode, Daniel unpacks antitrust and abuse of dominance for us, providing us with a specific case study to illustrate both the concept and the tradecraft of the Bureau.
Linked mentioned in the podcast:
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven’t already, be sure and click subscribe on your favourite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically each week, and check out my other retail industry media properties; the Remarkable Retail podcast, the Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, and the Food Professor podcast.
Last but not least, if you are into BBQ, check out my all new YouTube barbecue show, Last Request Barbeque, with new episodes each and every week!
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company & Maven Media, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co! Have a safe week everyone!
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated on thought leadership panels worldwide. Michael was recently added to ReThink Retail’s prestigious Top 100 Global Retail Influencers for a second year in 2022.
Michael is also the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts, including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus the Remarkable Retail with author Steve Dennis, Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Most recently, Michael launched Conversations with CommerceNext, a podcast focussed on retail eCommerce, digital marketing and retail careers - all available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music and all major podcast platforms. Michael is also the producer and host of the “Last Request Barbeque” channel on YouTube where he cooks meals to die for and influencer riches.
Michael LeBlanc 00:05
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Michael LeBlanc 00:09
Meet Daniel Jenson, Major Case Director at Competition Bureau Canada, with the third of four episodes created to help us understand the laws governing and protecting retailers. If you want to learn more about the Competition Bureau, and how it operates, tune into the series’ first episode back in October. In this episode, Daniel unpacks, antitrust and abuse of dominance for us, providing us with a specific case study to illustrate both the concept and the tradecraft of the Bureau.
Michael LeBlanc 00:29
Let's listen in now. Daniel you're welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this morning?
Daniel Jenson 00:41
I'm doing very well. I'm doing very well. How are you doing, Michael?
Michael LeBlanc 00:45
You know, fantastic. I'm really enjoying it and I'm getting great feedback on our series. And for the listeners, this is another in the series from the Competition Bureau Canada informing and advising and providing resources and insight to retailers and the, and the community. And if you want to learn more about the Competition Bureau itself, I will refer you to and I'll put a link in the show notes right back to our first episode. So, we won't spend much time together, Daniel, talking about the Bureau itself, we'll get right into your area of expertise. But again, for the listeners, if you want some context, perhaps you missed that episode, that Nicola does a really nice job of outlining how and what the Bureau is and how they operate broadly. But for you, we're going to dive right into some interesting work in anti-competitive in that kind of area of operation. But let's start with a little bit about you. So, who are you and what do you do for a living? And tell us about yourself?
Daniel Jenson 01:42
Sure. So, hi everyone. I'm Daniel Jenson. And it's a pleasure to be with you all today. Right now, I'm the Major Case Director, Strategic Policy Advisor in the Monopolistic Practices Directorate of the Competition Bureau, which is really the part of the Bureau that deals with abuse of dominance, which is what we're going to be talking about here today. Speaking a bit about myself, I've been with the Bureau since 2013. And I have a background in economics. And really kind of like the, the core of my job, historically and at present, is both leading abuse of dominance investigations and providing advice with respect to those that are led by others, and also developing the (inaudible) strategic policy. One thing that let me also just take a very quick second to say at the outset, which is everything I say here today represents my own views only and that any errors or omissions are my own.
Michael LeBlanc 02:40
So, your economics background. Tell me a bit more about that. What, you know, there's lots of different elements of economics, were you always interested in the nature of markets, basically? And what makes them work? And what makes them malfunction? Is that something that always interested you? Or were you drawn to that, in, in your studies, talk about that for a little bit?
Daniel Jenson 02:59
So, it's kind of funny, in some ways, I think, you know, when I first went down the path of economics, I did it a bit arbitrarily, what happened was that at a certain point in my undergrad degree, I happened to take a case, sorry, a class about competition law. And I found it really interesting. And so, I took some more, and then I went off and did my master's degree, and, you know, continued to focus in that area. And personally, I just find it to be a really interesting space. Because of it, I think it's something that's really important in our day-to-day lives. And I think that it is important for understanding how the process of competition affects us and how it should be protected.
Michael LeBlanc 03:50
Well, you're right about that. I mean, you know, it is a hot button issue. And it's one that garners a lot of media exposure and a lot of exposure for the Bureau. And it is one of those things, but I, I, I, I suspect it's also one that is slightly either misunderstood or people don't know enough. And that's why we're here talking today. So, let's jump right in. So, we're focused on explaining antitrust, abuse of dominance from your perspective. Let's start with a very plain language definition for the listeners to ground our audience in what you consider these things and what, what they mean from, from your perspective, and from the Bureau's perspective?
Daniel Jenson 04:26
Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I think that at its core, abuse of dominance, specifically, and in many ways competition law more generally, is about protecting the process of competition from powerful firms doing things to harm. The idea is really to preserve competitive forces to keep rivalry intense, to ensure that they are what determine market outcomes, (inaudible) large players put a thumb on the scales. Markets are competitive, you know, the outcomes of that are really valuable. So, it gives consumers lower priced services, broad varieties of products and new innovations. It's a process that rewards those companies that out compete the rivals on the merits. Now, I think it's also important to understand a bit about what abuse of dominance law is not. A common misconception is that it's about breaking up monopolies and that's not exactly true. Just having a dominant position, or even having a monopoly isn't against the law in and of itself, or charging high prices, as a result of that. It's really the abuse of that position to affect competition, which is a problem under the act. So conceptually, abuse of dominance is when a dominant entity uses that position in a way that results in competitors, or competition being less effective.
Michael LeBlanc 05:46
So, so this is a really interesting point, I think, for the listener, and that's understanding at its core, the difference between something and someone, an organization being very, very competitive, you know, working hard, building a strong business, building advantages, we all want to build advantages versus the competition, to leverage against competition and gain market share whatever, versus being, you know, anti-competitive, like, tell us a little bit more about that. Because I think it's really, you know, it's, I'm sure in your minds is it, is that a darker line than a greyer line like chalk the field for us, to mix metaphors a little bit about the difference. So, you've already said, interestingly, monopolies are not necessarily anti-competitive, but articulate that a little bit more for us. So, we can understand,
Daniel Jenson 06:35
Probably the best way to identify what sorts of abuse of dominance is that you're about making it so other competitors are less effective, for example, hobbling your rivals, or making them want to compete less, or even helping the dominant firm compete, or simply doing things that are competition itself. So, maybe to give a a bit of an example that might help, (crossover talk), your listeners.
Michael LeBlanc 07:02
That's super helpful,
Daniel Jenson 07:03
You know, just, just being big and having enough scale, that you can sell better products at a lower price than other rivals, and still make a profit, you know, that's really just competing, even though we might have the effect of putting competitors out of business, because they can't match that. You know,
Michael LeBlanc 07:20
You said something interesting there. And I want to pursue that just as I think about it. Because I know there's, there's and it's not in your realm, anti-dumping, where you would have industries or countries even that put in products and don't make a profit and lower the price. So, that matters too, as t-, to you as well that maybe they're not making money, they're selling at cost or below cost. And, you know, that sometimes is a legitimate strategy at least in the short term for businesses to kind of gain market share. Talk about that a little bit.
Daniel Jenson 07:53
Yeah, so I mean, when it comes to the, the selling of products below cost that, that is something that can be an issue under the Competition Act, in some circumstances. There is a line of cases that deals with the idea of predatory pricing. So, that's the idea of selling products below cost with the aim of eliminating your rivals, and later on, increasing prices, because you've gotten rid of, you know, those rivals who would otherwise prevent you from doing that.
Michael LeBlanc 08:04
Right.
Daniel Jenson 08:05
Um, you know, I think that the lens that be approach this from is a bit different than, you know, anti - under train law, it's, that's not really an expert, but an area that I would tend to say I'm an expert in.
Michael LeBlanc 08:14
Sure.
Daniel Jenson 08:15
But, you know, the idea of selling products below cost is something that can be an issue under the act. But, you know, I think that it's also important to recognize that just, and I think that this is also a very important point to emphasize, you know, under abuse of dominance law, there's no behaviors that are inherently anti-competitive, you know, you can't just point to saying, hey, look, this company's selling products below cost and therefore that’s automatically and abuse of dominance. Instead, what we have to do is, we have to conduct a detailed analysis of, you know, is this firm dominant? Are they doing this for anti-competitive purposes? And is this having the effect of substantially listing or preventing competition? And, you know, I think that part of the reason why is easily illustrated by predatory pricing, or maybe just put it a bit more accurately low pricing, you know, often we want firms to price low, you know,
Michael LeBlanc 09:46
Sure.
Daniel Jenson 09:47
Like that, that's a good thing, in most cases for consumers. And there might be legitimate reasons for even selling below cost in some cases.
Michael LeBlanc 09:55
Maybe you're overstocked or maybe you've, you know, you've moved manufacturing to a different place, and you dramatically affected your cost of goods or something like, like, how do you, how do you think about that? Like, there's one thing to say you're selling below cost, there's another thing to selling, saying you're just not making any money, you know, first cost of the good versus the actual selling price kind of good. So, do you got to peel that back? And try to get into that once, once it comes to your attention?
Daniel Jenson 10:23
I mean, when we look at allegations of predatory pricing, you know, I think it's also important to recognize, those are only like a small subset of potential abuses of dominance. You know, (crossover talk).
Michael LeBlanc 10:37
Give me a few others, (crossover talk).
Daniel Jenson 10:38
Yeah sure, I'm happy to go there. You know, one, to give some other examples, and probably more common ones. You know, for example, exclusive contracts, that would be where, for example, a dominant firm goes to the companies who supply and says, Hey, you can only sell to me, or alternatively goes to the people who sell its products and say, Hey, you can only sell my products. Another example would be time, (crossover talk).
Michael LeBlanc 11:11
Let's unpack that one a little bit, because that's a very relevant one to retailers, right. A vendor comes in, you know, scenario says, Listen, I've got, I've got this thing. And of course, retailers, you know, there's no room on the shelf, right? In any general selling proposition, you've got to remove a product to add a product, right? Generally, notwithstanding, you know, endless aisles and things like that. So, if a vendor comes in and says, Listen, I'm gonna, I'm going to, you know, I want you to sell my product, I, you know, I want to take over the shelf, I don't want you to sell any other product. But you know, I'm not going to sell it, I'm not going to be the second on the shelf. So, either it's mine or my way or the highway, would you view that as a side, as sideways.
Daniel Jenson 11:52
I mean, it could, I think, you know, as I said, nothing is automatically an abuse of dominance. You know, that's the sort of behavior that has the potential to be an abuse of dominance, certainly. But, you know, to know, whether it truly is, we'd have to look at a number of factors, you know, including, as I say, is the company who's doing it dominant. You know, might there be pro-competitive reasons why they might want to do it? What amount of the market do those practices cover? You know, if it covers a lot of the market? Does that make it more difficult for other manufacturers to compete? It's a very detailed analysis. But that, that would be the sort of thing that, you know, depending on who's doing it, that could certainly make our ears perk up.
Michael LeBlanc 12:51
Interesting. Let me give you a different context and turn and turn the camera around 180 degrees. So, I think of, and I was speaking to someone about in the United States, and of course, you don't operate in the States, but just for context, example, two office supply company said, we want to get together, because there's, you know, we think we'll be better being one. And their perspective, generally, was that there's a lot of people who sell office supplies, right. But the way that case went, or the judgment went was that was too much concentration. Does that fall into your realm as well, that there's, you know, coming together in similar markets as similar organizations, you, you examine that? Does that fall within your purview?
Daniel Jenson 13:33
Well, it certainly does within the, the purview of the Bureau on the whole, you know, mergers and acquisitions are something that are one of the core things that the Bureau reviews, you know, those, those typically wouldn't be considered to be abuses of dominance.
Michael LeBlanc 13:52
Okay.
Daniel Jenson 13:53
There's a different legal framework that pertains to that. But, you know, there's also other parts of the act that depending on how they operationalize that could apply, you know, for example, if they didn't merge, but they just, you know, entered into an agreement to set their prices between them, that could be a concern under the criminal conspiracy provisions, you know, a joint venture between them. You know, that, that falls under a different provision of the Act. So, it's certainly something that the Bureau could look at on, on the whole, though.
Michael LeBlanc 14:31
Now, once you do this work, and I imagine the investigations take many, many, many months, if not years, you know, what action or remedies do you pursue? What is your area? Do you have civil, criminal? Can you break things up and talk about that for a bit?
Daniel Jenson 14:46
You know, maybe to take a little bit of a step back and talk about the Bureau's overall process. You know, generally what happens is that when we become aware of a situation that might be an abuse of dominance, we investigate it. You know, and if we look at it, and I think it's right to say that investigations can be quite lengthy in abuse of dominance investigations in particular can often be incredibly complex and fact intensive. You know, but if we do an investigation, it seems like there is an issue. You know, there's really two paths forward for us.
Daniel Jenson 15:21
The first one is that we can negotiate a voluntary resolution with that company who's engaging in the practice. But if that isn't successful, we essentially sue them in front of the Competition Tribunal, which is a really a, you can think of it as a specialized court that hears certain matters under the Competition Act. You know, in terms of what the outcome of that can be, there's a number of different things under the abuse of dominance provisions, probably the core thing, the core remedy that tends to be imposed is getting the firm to stop what it was doing, to stop that thing that was the abuse of dominance. You know, it's also possible for the Tribunal to order, you know, that firms can do other things that are necessary to kind of overcome the effects of, of their conduct in the market, that, that could theoretically, include breaking up the firm. You know, however, there's never been a remedy of that nature, (crossover talk).
Michael LeBlanc 16:39
Yeah, you know I was going to say, I can't, I can't recall anything that extreme. It typically, is there stop-sells, or any other kind of different mechanisms, but it doesn't feel like it's gotten that extreme, though you, you could authorize that? Is that, is that something that's theoretically possible? Or (crossover talk), you guys could do it?
Daniel Jenson 16:56
It's something that's theoretically possible, yes. In fact, it's explicitly talked about in the Competition Act. But, you know, again, I think that, that would be pretty extreme. And I think you'd probably have to think about why it's necessary to go that far versus why it wouldn't be enough to say, just stop them from doing that practice.
Michael LeBlanc 17:24
So, so I can imagine it at dinner parties and cocktail parties, you're, you're a popular fellow in terms of hey, I saw this going on and, and that feels anti-competitive to me. What, what is, you know, what is the most common misperception asked differently in our conversation that, that you would want, you would correct and want to correct both with, with everyone listening and, and in general, what, what, what do people generally misunderstand, so to speak about the work you do and those lines that you chalk?
Daniel Jenson 17:54
Yeah. I mean, I guess for me, I kind of go back to a point that I mentioned earlier, which is just being dominant, or just charging high prices. That isn't an issue under the Competition Act in and of itself. And, you know, I think that might be a pretty common misconception. I will admit before I personally got involved in, I personally got involved in competition law. You know, I had the vague sense that one of the core things that happened was you couldn't be a monopoly, if you’ve gotten, became a monopoly. Well, you get broken up. But that's not, that's not exactly right. Really goes back to the idea of being dominant. And then using that dominant position to affect competition. That's really the core of it. But it all ties back to that harm to the competitive process.
Michael LeBlanc 18:54
Well, it's a great discussion so far. Let's, if you could walk us through a recent example, if there's one you can share that kind of takes us from, from start to resolution? What, off mic, you and I talked about a specific one, share with us an example that helps illustrate some of these concepts, principles and, and outcomes?
Daniel Jenson 19:12
Yeah, sure. So, probably the best example I can talk about is the Bureaus' case against the Toronto Real Estate Board. You know, it's one where, kind of the procedural history of it is fairly complex. So, I won't get into it. But, you know, just to give people a bit of a sense of the timeline. This is a case where we initially brought our case against TREB in 2011. And then the litigation ran until 2018.
Michael LeBlanc 19:33
Wow.
Daniel Jenson 19:34
So, it, it, it, I think it's also important to, to take a second to emphasize that, you know, as I said, investigations can take some time, but then the actual resolution of the case before the Competition Tribunal can also take a while, as this shows. So, maybe to give a little bit of background on which, you know, some listeners might already know that TREB is a trade association of real estate agents primarily in the Greater Toronto Area. And TREB does a number of things for its members. But probably the most important thing they do is they operate the multiple listing service or MLS. You know, the MLS itself does a number of different things. But its primary function is really that it's a place where agents acting on behalf of home sellers list houses for sale. And because of that, it's often one of the main places where agents representing buyers go and look for houses. So, it performs that very important function of showing what's out there being a buyer or seller. However, as perhaps as a consequence of that, when listings get put into the MLS, there's a lot of information included in that, you know, information about the property, its listing history,
Michael LeBlanc 19:56
Sure, sure.
Daniel Jenson 19:58
Previous sale prices, stuff like that. And in of itself, that plays a very important role as well. Because if you're, say, an agent acting on behalf of the seller, it's really helpful to be able to go in and to look at what did other houses around here settle for, for example, and ask them what should I listed this house for, and you know, the exact same logic applies when you're acting for a buyer. So, the MLS, in addition to just being the place where you find properties, or list properties, it also has a lot of really important information in it to help agents provide advice to their customers and clients. And so, as a further consequence of all of this, the MLS is really important to access as an agent. And because to access the MLS, you need to be a member of TREB. And that gives TREB the ability to impose rules about how its member agents compete, and therefore a dominant position.
Daniel Jenson 20:55
So, what, what did TREB actually do that caused the Bureau to investigate? So, the case against Treb revolved around access to this MLS data and what agents can do with it, which was accepted as harming competition between agents in particular, relating to Virtual Office Websites or VOWs. So, if you're unfamiliar with that term a VOW is a secure password protected area on a member’s website, where you can display listing information, among other things. And why this is important is that, you know, historically, there's a lot of information that real estate agents would provide to their customers and clients and call it manual ways, right? Like the house down the street sold,
Michael LeBlanc 21:33
Sure.
Daniel Jenson 21:34
We'll give you a call and say, here's what the price is. Or we'll, if you're really old school, fax it, or email, or what have you, right. But the nice thing about the VOW is that it allows customers to go and look up that information themselves. And this was a sort of competition that TREB was preventing, in the sense that by imposing certain restrictions on VOWs, which I'll talk about in a second, this prevented new disruptive and innovative real estate brokerage models from emerging that used these online services. And you know, maybe those models would have been a threat to agents who more traditionally operated in kind of a bricks and mortar face-to-face base, based manner. In terms of more specifically what TREB did, really, there's two parts to it. You know, although TREB allowed VOWs to some degree and had implemented a basic data feed with information on active listings that really didn't include a lot of the information that was really core in the MLS database, and important to agents, customers and clients. It wasn't enough information to make the market so to speak. It was just a sample of the information. It wasn't, it wasn't enough, basically in, in your eyes or as you're describing it, right? Yeah, that's right. So, really, the information they put out there was just about active listings. So, a property currently offered for sale. And that's important, that's very important. But you know, if (crossover talk).
Michael LeBlanc 25:09
History is important too, right?
Daniel Jenson 25:11
Exactly. And that's somewhat really TREB withheld. It didn't provide information about historical listings, it didn't provide information about sales prices, it didn't provide information about listings withdrawn, expired, suspended or terminated. And that meant that, you know, hey, if you're a customer who's interested in a property, but, you know, maybe that property has a history of being unsuccessfully offered for sale that would tell you something about the nature of it, to see that oh, it was listed last year and had been taken off after a month and listed again, taken off, (crossover talk).
Michael LeBlanc 25:52
It's very important (crossover talk) information.
Daniel Jenson 25:56
So, the second thing that TREB did, which is also very important, is that it prevented the use of any information in this data feed to be used for analytics, basically, you couldn't take this data and say, use it to build some sort of an automated estimate of, you know, here's areas of the city where there's a lot of activity going on, you know, and so that, despite the fact that it also didn't include a lot of information that would have been helpful for analytics, even the more limited information that was there couldn't be used. And that prevents another form of competition, it prevents agents from developing analytical tools that maybe would help their customers and clients see what, what's going on in the market, or developing tools that maybe would just be internal, and it would help that brokerage compete. Ultimately, we brought the case against TREB, before the Tribunal, as I said, it ran from 2011 to 2018. But we were ultimately, (crossover talk),
Michael LeBlanc 27:08
Now was that, you know, that, that timeline, these are obviously very complex. Does the timeline reflect the complexity of the case? Or does it reflect a judgment about the case that this may or may or may not be like, I guess, by the time you, that's a lot of resources to use in a case? You don't make these decisions lightly? I'm very, very sure. Because your expectation would be, you know, it would take years. So, I guess (inaudible) is that common that we listen. This is complex, it's going to take a while to figure out, versus it's just complex, and it's going to take us a lot, a long time to explain it and go through the process. What was your view on that?
Daniel Jenson 27:51
Well, I mean I think that, you know, this case is probably a bit of an outlier, in terms of how long it took, in fairness. Part of the reason why was that we initially brought the case in 2011 I think and in 2014, the, the Tribunal, they issued an initial judgment, where we lost, we successfully appealed that, then we went back to the Tribunal. You know TREB appealed, you know, and so there, there were a number of steps there, right. But I think it's also fair to say that, you know, even though this was an outlier, you know, it, it still can take time, measured in years from the start to end of litigation. You know, so that's probably a bit of an outlier. But, you know,
Michael LeBlanc 28:51
Time but not, but not princi-, but not in terms of principle. So, three things that, in your mind, stood out about that. So obviously, they had a dominant market position, but you and, you know, the Bureau said, well, listen, you're using it to disadvantage and seriously impact competition. Is that a fair summary of, of, you know, seven years of, of back and forth? Is that an accurate summary if we had, you know, one or two lines to just summarize why that's a good case to understand.
Daniel Jenson 29:20
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that well, maybe to summarize it, you know, I think that it's important because this is really something that does have a very substantial impact for home buyers and sellers in Toronto. You know, members of TREB can now compete in new ways, you know, like consumers have access to more information on the internet than they had before. Agents are in a better position to develop data driven services than they were before and all of that means that homebuyers and sellers are better informed, and I think that's important.
Michael LeBlanc 30:04
So, an open scale matter. Basically, I mean housing is obviously both important to us individually and to the economy and to everything right, that, that market flows, as you would say, as an economist efficiently and the market is clear as well. And any, anything, any sand in the gears of that market is very, very important for all those reasons, right. That's why it rose to this level of scrutiny and, and resources. Yeah,
Daniel Jenson 30:29
Yeah. I think that that's right. And I think it's also kind of helpful to note that, you know, although this was a case about the Toronto Real Estate Board and competition in Toronto, you know, following this, you know, many other major real estate boards have revised their own practices.
Michael LeBlanc 30:37
Sure.
Daniel Jenson 30:38
Well, so, you know, I think that, you know, it's probably something that has a broader impact beyond Toronto as well.
Michael LeBlanc 30:54
Right on, right on. All right. Well, listen, this has been a great discussion, it's obviously of great interest for a whole bunch of reasons to the listeners. Now, let's talk about, you know, in the course of this, listening to us, they you know, at or in their experience, someone listening might have, or observe businesses, they think that conduct is, is offside, as we've been talking about it, what can they do? Can they reach out? Is the resources to go learn more beyond this? And can they reach out and ask, Hey, is this behavior offside? And could you investigate? Or what would it take to investigate? So, talk about basically getting in touch, learning more, and getting in touch even to, to report suspected abusive behavior.
Daniel Jenson 31:36
So, I think that what I would say is that if anyone thinks that they are aware of anti-competitive behavior, they should contact the Bureau. You know, there's information about how to do that on our website. And, you know, I think we can definitely provide some, some links to help people with that. The other thing I'll just say is that maybe you're just kind of interested in learning a bit more about abuse of dominance. You know, we also do have a number of materials on our website, some of which are at a relatively high level, but also some much more detailed technical information, such as our specialized guidelines on this. And, you know, I think we can also include some links to VOW if they are of interest to people.
Michael LeBlanc 32:26
Right on. Right on. All right. So, I'll put lots of that in the show notes. There's lots of ways to get in touch. Well, listen, it's been a great discussion about such a fundamentally important issue. And you've done a fantastic job of kind of laying it out for everyone at, at a high level and whether they're experienced or just learning about it. And as I said, I'll put resources and links into the show notes. Daniel, thanks so much for joining me on The Voice of Retail, another great discussion. Helping retailers understand and helping the folks listening understand the Competition Bureau. Your, what you look at and what you consider onside and offside. A fascinating discussion. Listen, I wish you the best rest of your day. And once again, thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Daniel Jenson 33:08
Well, thanks so much, Michael. It's been a pleasure to be here and to chat.
Michael LeBlanc 33:12
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, be sure and click on subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically, twice a week.
Michael LeBlanc 33:21
And check out my other retail industry media properties, the Remarkable Retail podcast, Conversations with CommerceNext podcast and The Food Professor podcast with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Last but not least, if you're into barbecue, check out my all-new YouTube barbecue show Last Request Barbecue with new episodes each and every week.
Michael LeBlanc 33:48
I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company and Maven Media. And if you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn or visit my website at meleblanc.co.
Have a safe week everyone.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
competition, bureau, dominance, important, abuse, agents, case, tribunal, competitive, information, act, market, bit, core, sell, prices, compete, listeners, dominant, firm