Under the merger provisions of the Competition Act, the Minister of Industry has the power to review the pre-merger notification threshold annually.
The Minister may leave the threshold unchanged or may adjust it using the indexing mechanism set out in the Competition Act, which is based on change in Canada's nominal GDP.
Today, Minister Champagne announced that he will maintain the transaction-size threshold for the advance notification of mergers under the Competition Act for 2024 at $93 million.
Maintaining the threshold will help ensure that significant transactions in all sectors of the economy are reviewed in advance by the Commissioner of Competition to determine if they are likely to prevent or lessen competition substantially.
The graphic below shows the transaction-size threshold from 2010 to 2024.
Text version
Line graph showing an upward trend in the merger notification threshold, set by the Minister of Industry, between 2010 and 2024. The threshold in 2010 was $70 million and rose steadily to $96 million in 2019 and 2020 before being set at $93 million from 2021 onwards. The graph also highlights an upward trend in the transactions that would have escaped scrutiny from the Competition Bureau since the threshold freeze in 2020.
The government has been taking every opportunity to strengthen competition law. Maintaining the notification threshold is the latest in a series of steps taken to strengthen Canada's competition law, including by holding public consultation on the future of Canada's competition policy, by making meaningful amendments to the Competition Act through Bills C-56 and C-59, and by increasing the Competition Bureau's budget, among others.