In a speech to a Canadian Bar Association conference, Matthew Boswell said his office faces heavy burdens in showing that mergers will be bad for consumers, and that Canada is unique among G7 countries in allowing monopolistic corporate combinations on the grounds that they’ll be more efficient. That’s a particular problem in evaluating mergers in fast-moving digital markets, he said, but with additional funding he’s creating a new digital enforcement branch. (The Logic)

Talking point: Boswell has called before for a review of Canada’s competition laws, and Wednesday he said that recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic will be harder if the country doesn’t have industries whose players have to battle each other in fair fights. He singled out the Competition Tribunal, the quasi-court that hears his office’s cases against mergers and anti-competitive practices, for demanding estimates of dollar-figure harms from mergers before agreeing to pause them even temporarily.