Industry Minister Mélanie Joly speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on May 28. Joly has called for applying a "wartime philosophy" to the current regulatory environment.Blair Gable/Reuters

Joshua Krane is a competition lawyer at MLT Aikins LLP.

The changes to Canada’s competition laws over the past 2½ years marked a notable consensus across the political spectrum. Politicians of all stripes agreed that Canada’s competition laws were out of step with those of global counterparts and contained gaps when it came to wage fixing, drip pricing and anti-competitive agreements.

Parliament made it easier to challenge mergers by removing the “efficiencies defence” that allowed those for which the cost savings exceeded the anticipated negative effects. It put the onus on the parties to show why their merger would not prevent or lessen competition substantially when their combined market share would exceed 30 per cent.

The Competition Bureau recently released its annual plan called “

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