Canadian Lawyer

24 J U N E / J U LY 2 0 1 9 w w w . c a n a d i a n l a w y e r m a g . c o m S itting in the boardroom of his Gatineau, Que. office, his glasses pushed on to his head and a Starbucks venti sitting untouched in front of him, Matthew Boswell is describing his ambition for Canada's top compe- tition watchdog. "My vision for the organization is tied to the digital economy and the data-driven economy, to be a world-leading enforcement agency in terms of competition issues in the digital economy," he says. While the Competition Bureau has existed for decades, Boswell is facing new Commissioner Matthew Boswell intends Competition Bureau to be a leading enforcement agency in the digital economy By Elizabeth Thompson BRINGING COMPETITION TO THE DIGITAL AGE C R O S S E X A M I N E D challenges that many of his predecessors could likely never have imagined. Data is a valuable commodity. Many gov- ernments and regulators are having difficulty keeping up with the pace of change in the digital economy. "The world is moving a lot more quickly than it was 20 years ago, and enforcement agencies around the world and across Canada need to be able to move quickly as well; otherwise, by the time we get to things, they could be irrelevant to Canadian consumers," says Boswell, who was appointed Canada's competition commissioner in February after holding the job on an interim basis since May 2018. Nestled in an office tower across the river from Parliament Hill, the Competition Bureau's offices are a long way from where Boswell started his legal career on Bay Street in Toronto. How- ever, they're only a stone's throw from where he grew up and overlook the former site of the E.B. Eddy factory where his father, Edward Boswell, rose through the ranks to become president. Boswell grew up in Ottawa and attended Ash- bury College, an exclusive private boys school. When his family moved to Toronto in the 1980s, he attended another private school — Trinity College School in Port Hope. At Queen's University, Boswell attended law school after completing a BA in history. "I'm not one of those people who at age 10 knew that the only thing I wanted to do in life was be a lawyer," he explains. "But I did have a sense that it might be something that worked with my personality, my strengths, my weaknesses." Boswell started his career in 1996, articling in Toronto at Smith Lyons, then working as an associate. But after only three years, Boswell quit Bay Street to become a Crown prosecutor so he could spend more time in court. "I took a 50-per-cent cut in pay when I joined the Toronto Crown's office, which wasn't so great two weeks before my wedding," he says with a wry laugh. While Boswell worked on a wide variety of cases, it wasn't long before he became "the gun Crown," responsible for prosecuting gun crimes. At the time, there were so many shootings that 2005 became known as "the summer of the gun." After a brief stint back in private practice with friends at the small Toronto law firm Ormston List Frawley LLP, Boswell moved in 2007 to a special "boiler room" unit set up by the Ontario Securities Commission. "It was great to be working with friends, but

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