Last month, the Competition Bureau (CB) entered into a consent agreement with the Northwest Territories Association of Realtors (NWTAR) to handle concerns with its membership practices in real estate.

The CB’s investigation found that the NWTAR conducted itself in an anti-competitive manner by “denying membership to those seeking to compete remotely with the association’s existing members”.

The result

The CB concluded that the NWTAR’s conduct was in opposition to the Competition Act’s abuse of dominance provisions.

Barriers to new competition forms are made by refusing membership based on different business models. This is especially so for services offering consumers multiple options and fee structures that differ from traditional full-service real estate brokerage services.

In the end, NWTAR cooperated with the CB and signed an agreement to resolve the concerns with its competition. NWTAR also approved membership of a firm looking to compete with existing NWTAR members.

The agreement states that NWTAR will accept members as per the terms and conditions on its website and will ensure any future competitors have non-discriminatory access to the market.

View the complete agreement on the Competition Tribunal’s website.