In a lot of ways, the economy we have is created by our laws. That may seem obvious, but it’s easy to forget that when you’re just going about your business, all those little daily transactions happen with a larger framework. Things like how much the stuff you buy costs and what people get paid are, to a great extent, determined by the laws we make rather than just “economic laws.”

One of the most important pillars of that institutional framework our economy functions in is competition law, and to really understand Canada’s competition laws and how they work, on this episodewe’re joined by Professor Jennifer Quaid.

Professor Quaid is an Associate Professor and Vice-Dean of Research in the Civil Law Section at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, and she’s worked on some of the most important competition cases in Canada. 

Today’s show is a true deep dive, and quite long, so we’ve turned it into two parts. In this first part, we get into the details of what competition law is for, and how it’s meant to work in Canada. Next episode, in part 2, we’ll look at how that law was applied in the case of the Rogers-Shaw deal, and some of the changes to competition law the federal government is exploring now.