An Ontario Superior Court judge has rejected an effort to include Maple Leaf Foods in a class-action lawsuit connected to the bread-price fixing scandal.
Maple Leaf was not initially named as a defendant when the class-action lawsuit was certified in an Ontario court in 2021 against various grocery retailers and other food companies.
The plaintiffs, with support from Canada Bread Co., contended last month that Maple Leaf should be added to the lawsuit due to its previous ownership of the company.
Canada Bread was fined by the bureau in 2023 after confessing to four incidents of price-fixing, but has argued in the class-action lawsuit that Maple Leaf, its majority owner at the time, should bear the responsibility instead.
Maple Leaf sold Canada Bread to Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo for $1.8 billion in February.
The class-action lawsuit is one of two lawsuits initiated as a result of an ongoing Competition Bureau investigation into an alleged industry-wide conspiracy to manipulate the price of bread.
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