The Canadian Federal Court rules en banc that the Competition Authority is able to seek a temporary pause on a merger whilst the interim pause is debated in court (Secure / Tevita)

Canada’s Competition Tribunal has jurisdiction to grant “interim interim” relief in the contested merger context* As discussed in our prior blog post titled “Competition Tribunal Dismisses Request for Interim Interim Order”, the Competition Tribunal (the “Tribunal”) previously found that it does not have the power to grant “interim interim” relief pending its decision for “interim” relief. While the Tribunal’s decision was initially upheld following an emergency motion before a single judge of the Federal Court of Appeal(the “FCA”), the jurisdictional question before it was recently overturned following a hearing before a full panel of FCA judges. In particular, this panel of judges confirmed that the Tribunal has the jurisdiction to temporarily block mergers (i.e., grant “interim