Court documents seen by Canadian Press are said to show that the Federal Competition Bureau requested search warrants for premises of seven companies because it had reasonable grounds to believe they committed multiple offences. It says bread wholesalers Canada Bread Company Ltd. and George Weston Ltd.’s senior officers directly communicated with one another and agreed to increase prices. It claims the suppliers met with their retail customers named as Loblaw Companies Ltd., Walmart Canada Corp., Sobeys Inc., Metro Inc. and Giant Tiger Stores Ltd. to get their approval for the price increase. Late last year, Loblaw and George Weston admitted they sparked the investigation when they approached the bureau after becoming aware of an industry-wide arrangement to agree on retail and wholesale prices of some packaged bread products from late 2001 to March 2015.
