Really your question raises issues that relate to the abuse of dominance provisions of the Competition Act. Let me speak about the “fangs” for a moment. Recently, as I mentioned, Bill C-10 enacted a change to that provision to allow the tribunal to award administrative and monetary penalties of up to $10 million. That's designed to promote greater compliance with the abuse of dominance provisions of the act.
The rest of your question, though, really raises two other issues, and one of them has to do with what we call slotting fees or listing allowances or other restrictions on shelf space in grocery stores. Then the second part is what I would call fidelity rebates or exclusivity perks. Let me just talk for one minute about how the act addresses those, again in a broad context, without talking about any specific companies or specific issues. This will be in the guidelines, so if there's more explanation required, it's also laid out in there.
Where a firm or a group of firms holds a dominant position in respect of the market for a product, the guidelines state that the imposition of fees in exchange for shelf space--and the fact that shelf space is limited--means that such arrangements could have an exclusionary effect on some competitors or classes of competitors. Where a dominant firm does that, the bureau would be concerned that the payment of a slotting allowance is being used by that dominant firm in order to acquire exclusivity or to tie up enough of the available shelf space to preclude other competitors from entering or expanding in the market. That issue is described in further detail in the guidelines themselves.
Now on the issue of exclusivity--and I hate to sound like a broken record--that's something that is discussed in a fair bit of detail. What the guidelines say is that where you have these fidelity rebates, loyalty rebates, or exclusive dealing arrangements, the concern is that they may tie up the market or otherwise prevent competitors from being able to compete in the marketplace, or make it much more difficult for competitors to be able to enter into the market. In cases where those are engaged in by a dominant firm with the intent to exclude competition and with a significant anti-competitive effect, that conduct can be subject to proceedings from the tribunal.
Essentially, that's the kind of--