Efforts to add Maple Leaf Foods to bread-price fixing class-action denied

An Ontario Superior Court judge has dismissed an attempt to add Maple Leaf Foods MFI-T to a class-action lawsuit related to the bread-price-fixing scandal. When the class-action lawsuit was originally certified in an Ontario court in 2021 against several grocery retailers and other food companies, Maple Leaf was not included. Plaintiffs, supported by Canada Bread Co.

, argued last month that Maple Leaf should be added as a defendant in the lawsuit because of its past ownership of the company. Canada Bread was fined by the bureau in 2023 after admitting to four counts of price-fixing, but has argued as part of the class-action lawsuit that Maple Leaf, which was its majority owner at the time, should shoulder the blame 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 launched in the wake of a continuing Competition Bureau investigation into an alleged industry-wide conspiracy to fix the price of bread..