Why price-fixing is hard to catch

CBC News interviewed Jim Brander, a professor at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, for a story on price-fixing in the Canadian bread industry.

Brander said the discussion to begin price-fixing usually doesn’t leave a paper trail.

“Sometimes it arises when one person says: ‘We’re killing ourselves with these low prices, shouldn’t we do something about it?’ That’s normally how it works — some kind of face-to-face discussion or telephone discussion, which gradually lends itself to some kind of agreement,” he said.