Biography: Competition

Madeleine Renaud is a partner in McCarthy Tétrault's competition group in Montreal. Ms Renaud advises a broad range of Canadian and international clients on all aspects of Canadian competition law, including mergers and national and international cartel investigations.

She has been involved in several landmark cases involving competition legislation before the courts and the Competition Tribunal, including Chrysler Canada, Imperial Oil Limited, Association québécoise des pharmaciens propriétaires et al, Nova Scotia Pharmaceutical Society et al, ADM Agri-Industries, Astral Media, Cascades Fine Papers Group, Infineon Technologies and others. She also defends class actions against corporations allegedly involved in cartel activities both nationally and internationally, in industries such as vitamins, food and feed additives, gasoline products, rubber chemicals, air cargo, and dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and optical disk drives.

Ms Renaud was chair of the national section of competition law of the Canadian Bar Association in 2005 and 2006; she was previously chair of the international competition and trade law committee and of the criminal matters committee of the section. She was selected by the Canadian Competition Bureau to be to be part of an external task force of lawyers and expert economists appointed to advise on reforming the cartel legislation, which culminated in the amendments to the Competition Act that came into force in March 2010. She was invited as Canadian non-governmental adviser (NGA) at the International Competition Network (ICN) Annual Conferences in Merida, Mexico (2003) and Moscow, Russia (2007), and the ICN Cartel Workshop in Yokohama, Japan (2010).

Ms Renaud was appointed in 2006 by the government of Quebec to hear disputes pursuant to the Internal Trade Agreement and was part of a summary panel in 2010 to review an outstanding dispute regarding Ontario regulation of imitation dairy products. She was awarded the title advocatus emeritus in 2007 by the Quebec Bar, and the Order of Merit in 2011 by the Faculty of Law (civil law) of the University of Ottawa, in recognition of her professional excellence, outstanding contribution to the profession and exceptional outreach.

Ms Renaud has authored a number of papers relating to competition law and other topics and is a frequent guest speaker at national conferences on competition law. Ms Renaud is rated by the Martindale-Hubbell Directory and appears as a leading competition lawyer in the most recent editions of the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory, Lexpert Leading US/Canada Cross-Border Litigation Lawyers, Chambers Global: The World's Leading Lawyers, Best Lawyers in Canada, PLC Which Lawyer, Competition Law Handbook (Practical Law Company), and The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers. She is also featured in Euromoney Legal Media Group's Guide to the World's Leading Competition & Antitrust Lawyers and Guide to the World's Leading Women in Business Law and appears as a leading lawyer in administrative and public law in the last edition of Best Lawyers in Canada.

Ms Renaud received her Bachelor's degree in translation as well as her civil law degree (LLL), summa cum laude, and her common law degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Ottawa. Ms Renaud clerked with the Hon Justice Antonio Lamer of the Supreme Court of Canada. She is called to the Bars of Quebec and Ontario and is a member of the Canadian Bar Association, the American Bar Association (antitrust law section) and the International Commission of Jurists, Canadian section. Ms Renaud is fluent in both English and French.