Canada

Prosecution and Regulation

The criminal justice system, in general, lacks sufficient resources to detect and prosecute white-collar crimes. Moreover, the defendants in white-collar cases tend to put up a much stronger legal defense, since they usually have far more financial resources to hire experienced attorneys. An alternative means of regulating white-collar crime in Canada is for the state to impose certain duties of care on people, and to allow the plaintiff to seek damages from the defendant for the wrongdoing. In general, white-collar and corporate crimes seem to be easily condoned by the criminal justice system and the general public, compared to street crimes.

Corporate crimes are usually dealt with outside the criminal law and regulated by separate federal, provincial and municipal laws. Enforcement is handled by special government departments and bodies through a regulatory system focused on mediation and compensation rather than on prosecution and punishment. For example, the Canadian provinces have introduced workers' compensation acts and regulations governing occupational health and safety that create systems of workplace safety standards and inspection.

The best-known example of legislative efforts against corporate crime is the federal Competition Act (formerly the Combines Investigation Act), which prohibits various forms of potentially anticompetitive acts. These include unfair margin squeezing, freight equalization to impede competition, misleading advertising, the use of fighting brands to eliminate a competitor, conspiracies to fix prices, and other corporate crimes. Responsibility for the enforcement of the Competition Act is divided among several authorities: Parliament which passes the legislation; the Director of Investigation and Research (DIR) under the Competition Act who heads the Competition Bureau and investigates possible violations; the Department of Justice (DOJ) which takes cases before the courts or Tribunal; and the adjudicators who determine if a violation has occurred and, if so, what penalty or remedy is appropriate.

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