Canadian Law

Alison Long owns and manages buildings in Vancouver and had recently put out a call for bids on a cleaning contract for the buildings. Her purchase of the buildings was heavily leveraged, so she needs to be vigilant about costs such as cleaning. When she started to review the bids, she noticed that several looked very similar. From the email addresses on the submissions, it appeared that some had even come from the same source. She also noticed that the low bid in the file was significantly lower than many of the others, but was still higher than what she had been anticipating. When she mentioned her concerns to her partners, they reminded her that Canada had a Competition Act and a Competition Bureau to administer and enforce the Act.The Competition Act is an effort to identify and prohibit anti-competitive business practices. Bid-rigging is one such practice addressed by the Act.

Question:

Identify and describe five (5) indicators of potential bid-rigging that Alison may want to be aware of? Outline what can she do if she suspects bid-rigging?