A C$358,000 Bill for a Constitutional Gambit
On June 5, 2026, Canada's Competition Tribunal ordered Google to pay C$358,000 in costs to the Competition Bureau: C$277,600 in expert fees, C$54,000 in legal fees, and C$26,600 for transcripts and printing. The amount is trivial relative to Google's revenues. What it closes out is not.
The costs order follows the Tribunal's March 3, 2026 dismissal of a constitutional challenge that Google had staked on a creative but ultimately unsuccessful interpretation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Had the challenge succeeded, it could have disabled the Tribunal's power to impose administrative monetary penalties — not just in the Google case, but across Canada's modernised competition enforcement regime. It failed. The C$91-billion ad tech liability case proceeds.
The Constitutional Argument
Google's motion, heard over five days in September 2025, argued that the penalty provisions of section 79(3.1) of the Competition Act are so large that they trigger section 11 of the Charter — the provision protecting persons charged with criminal offences. The statutory formula permits penalties up to the greater of three times the value of any benefit derived from anti-competitive conduct, or three per cent of the person's annual worldwide gross revenues.
By Google's own calculation, applying the first prong to conduct alleged to have begun in 2008 could yield a penalty of C$91 billion. The company called it "shocking, gargantuan, and unprecedented in Canadian history." It argued that a potential penalty of that magnitude constituted a "true penal consequence" under the framework established in R. v. Wigglesworth (1987) and Guindon v. Canada (2015) — which would have required the Bureau to meet a criminal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
This was not a frivolous theory. Wigglesworth and Guindon do require courts to examine the magnitude, purpose, and stigma of a penalty when deciding whether it crosses from regulatory into criminal territory. Google also raised a section 8 Charter argument about compelled production of internal records during the investigation. Both grounds were live legal questions.
Why the Challenge Failed
Justice Andrew D. Little rejected every branch of the argument on March 3. The Tribunal found that section 79 proceedings are civil in nature: no criminal record attaches, no charge is laid, and no stigma equivalent to a criminal conviction results. Section 79(3.3) of the Competition Act states explicitly that a penalty order is issued "to promote practices by that person that are in conformity with this section and not to punish." That legislative purpose clause carries weight. The Tribunal found that even very large penalties can be regulatory rather than punitive when directed at corporations well-resourced enough to absorb smaller fines without changing their conduct.
The Tribunal also ruled the challenge was premature: no AMP had been imposed. Google was contesting a hypothetical maximum, not an actual order. On March 13, 2026, Google filed a notice of appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal. That appeal does not stay the main proceedings.
The Underlying Case
The Competition Bureau filed its application on November 28, 2024, under section 79 of the Competition Act, alleging Google abused its dominant position across Canada's ad tech supply chain through conduct dating to 2008. The Bureau's market share allegations are significant: approximately 90 per cent of the publisher ad server market, 70 per cent of advertiser networks, 60 per cent of demand-side platforms, and 50 per cent of the ad exchange market.
The alleged conduct includes tying DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) to its AdX ad exchange, granting its own tools preferential access to ad inventory, operating at negative margins in targeted segments to foreclose rivals, and imposing terms that restricted publishers from transacting with competing ad tech providers. The Bureau alleges the combined effect inflated advertising costs, reduced publishers' revenues, and suppressed innovation across the Canadian market.
The remedies sought are structural: the Bureau is asking the Tribunal to order Google to divest both DFP and AdX. That parallels the relief pursued in the U.S. Department of Justice's ad tech case, which also found Google had illegally monopolised ad tech markets.
The Proportionality Question That Remains Open
The constitutional ruling settles the procedural fight. The substantively harder question is still ahead.
Canada's ad tech market is not the global ad tech market. Google's worldwide revenues reached approximately US$348 billion in 2024; three per cent of that figure, even applied only to the relevant period, would yield a penalty dwarfing any fine previously imposed in Canadian competition history. The harm alleged, however, occurred in Canada — a market representing a fraction of Google's global ad revenues.
Section 79(3.2) of the Competition Act requires the Tribunal to weigh aggravating and mitigating factors when setting any actual AMP, including the effects on competition in the relevant market, affected revenues and profits, and the company's financial position. A proportionate outcome would examine demonstrable harm to Canadian publishers, advertisers, and consumers — not use global revenues as a convenient deterrence multiplier.
Canada's Competition Act reforms — three rounds of amendments from 2022 to 2024, with revenue-based AMPs first introduced in 2022 and the current thresholds set by Bill C-59, which received royal assent on June 20, 2024 — were designed to ensure large corporations face meaningful consequences for anti-competitive conduct. That is a legitimate policy goal. The constitutional ruling confirms these powers are lawful. Using them proportionately, when and if liability is found, is the test the Tribunal has yet to face.
For now, the constitutional fight is over. Google owes C$358,000. The trial that will decide whether it abused its dominance in Canada's ad tech market — and what that is actually worth — is the case that matters.