In January 2024, the Canadian Securities Administrators published amendments and changes to several national instruments and companion policies to implement a new non-mandatory access model for preliminary and final prospectuses of non-investment fund reporting issuers. The access model is not available for rights offerings, medium term note programs and other continuous distributions under a shelf prospectus. The amendments are effective 16 April 2024.
Quebec’s Bill 96 significantly expanded existing French language requirements under Quebec’s Charter of the French language, including new translation requirements for a wide range of employment documents. Similarly, the treatment of commercial standard form contracts (or contracts of adhesion) must now be translated into French first, even if the parties agree to proceed in a language other than French, such as English.
The Government of Canada has announced the 2024 financial thresholds for pre-merger notification and clearance under the Competition Act, and for pre-closing, “net benefit” review and approval under the Investment Canada Act (“ICA”). While the Competition Act “size of transaction” financial threshold remains the same, the ICA financial thresholds have increased. Significantly, this is the third year in a row that the Competition Act financial threshold has remained unchanged at CAD 93 million in a bid to maintain the number of transactions subject to review by the Commissioner of Competition.
Long-awaited reforms to the Canadian Competition Act (“Act”) have arrived and represent the most comprehensive amendments to the Act in over a decade. Recent and proposed amendments to the abuse of dominance provisions are likely to have a significant impact on how businesses operating in Canada assess and manage risk.
Modernization of Canadian competition law and foreign investment review is well underway. Recent and further proposed legislative amendments will impact how dealmakers assess substantial and procedural regulatory risk for mergers. This update summarizes the recent legislative amendments to the Competition Act (Act) that came into effect on 15 December 2023 and proposed legislative amendments to the Act and Investment Canada Act. Dealmakers should be aware of these amendments as they plan mergers involving Canadian businesses in 2024.
Earlier this year, Canada’s mandatory reporting rules were broadly expanded by lowering the thresholds to trigger a reporting obligation and increasing the information that must be reported to the Canada Revenue Agency As a result, taxpayers may be required to flag certain mergers and acquisitions transactions in real time if it could be reasonably concluded that one of the main purposes of entering into the transaction was to obtain a tax benefit.
In this In Focus video, our Canadian Tax and Corporate Transactions lawyers discuss how common contractual protection clauses could trigger an early reporting requirement and expose taxpayers to significant penalties if they fail to report.
In June 2019, the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA) was amended to require private CBCA corporations to prepare and maintain a register of “individuals with significant control” (the “ISC Register“).
There have been two key changes since this requirement was first introduced:
In 2023, we helped Canadian employers overcome a host of new challenges across the employment law landscape. Many companies started the year with difficult cost-cutting decisions and hybrid work challenges. In our 75-minute “quick hits” format, we’ll help Canadian in-house counsel and human resources leaders track what to keep top-of-mind for 2024.
In 2023, the Government of Canada focused on modernizing Canada’s Competition Act and Investment Canada Act, proposing legislation that will overhaul existing legislative frameworks. Looking forward, we expect the Government will continue its modernization agenda and the respective authorities will continue to take strong enforcement positions against perceived anti-competitive conduct and investments that raise potential national security concerns in 2024.
On 22 November 2023, the finalized regulations enacted under the Retail Payment Activities Act (RPAA) were published, with registration-related requirements expected to come into force beginning in November 2024 and the remainder in September 2025. The RPAA and Retail Payment Activities Regulations make up Canada’s new retail payment supervisory regime overseen by the Bank of Canada, Canada’s central bank.