Canada

In 1888, a select committee of the Canadian House of Commons began a broad investigation into a number of trades in which combinations or monopolies were suspected of limiting competition to an excessive degree. The inquiry was concerned with sugar and groceries, biscuits and confectionery, oatmeal, eggs, barley, coal, stoves, barbed wire, binder twine, agricultural implements, watch cases, coffins and fire insurance. The Committee to Study Combines Legislation, appointed by the Government in 1950 'to recommend what amendments, if any, should be made to our Canadian legislation in order to make it a more effective instrument for the encouraging and safeguarding of our free economy', submitted an interim report on rpm. on 1 October 1951. The Second World War marked a significant shift in the approach to pricing in a number of divisions of trade, a shift which is frequently regarded as an aftergrowth of the regulatory activities of the Wartime Prices and Trade Board.