Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Cineplex's Online Booking Fee of $1.50 per ticket is alleged to constitute "drip pricing" in violation of sections 52 and 54 of the Competition Act, forming the basis of a proposed consumer class action.

• The Competition Tribunal previously found Cineplex in breach of the Competition Act and imposed a nearly $40-million administrative monetary penalty, a decision now under appeal before the Federal Court of Appeal.

• Disputes arose over the sequencing of the defendants' application to strike versus the plaintiff's unfiled certification application, as well as which version of the plaintiff's amended pleading should govern.

• Whether section 52(7) of the Competition Act bars a private civil action under section 36 when the Commissioner has already pursued parallel civil enforcement proceedings remains an unresolved and novel question of statutory interpretation.

• The "double ticketing" claim under section 54 was struck because the plaintiff's own pleading described two prices expressed at different stages of the booking process rather than simultaneously, failing the temporal requirement.

• Neither party achieved substantial success across both decisions, resulting in each party bearing their own costs on both occasions.

Background and the online booking fee dispute

In June 2022, Cineplex introduced an Online Booking Fee for ticket purchases made through its website and mobile application. The fee was generally $1.50 per ticket, up to a maximum of $6 per order, with reduced fees available to members of Cineplex's loyalty programs. The fee was not included in the initial ticket price displayed to consumers; instead, it was added later during the checkout process — a practice commonly known as "drip pricing."

On January 22, 2024, plaintiff Amir Hossein Bahraini filed a Notice of Civil Claim in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, alleging that Cineplex Inc. and Cineplex Entertainment Limited Partnership breached sections 52 and 54 of the Competition Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-34, by failing to include the Online Booking Fee in the initial price represented to class members for movie tickets sold online.

The parallel Competition Tribunal proceedings

While the private class action was taking shape, the Commissioner of Competition had separately pursued Cineplex before the Competition Tribunal, alleging reviewable conduct under sections 74.01(1) and 74.01(1.1) of the Competition Act. On September 23, 2024, the Competition Tribunal issued its decision, finding that Cineplex was in breach of the Act. The Tribunal ordered Cineplex to make changes to its website and mobile app and imposed a nearly $40-million administrative monetary penalty, representing the aggregate amount of Online Booking Fees collected from mid-2022 through the end of 2023. Cineplex has appealed this order to the Federal Court of Appeal.

Procedural manoeuvring and the sequencing decision

Following the filing of the original claim, a series of procedural exchanges unfolded between the parties. The plaintiff amended the pleading by consent to correct a defendant's name and later proposed a further amendment to add a claim for unjust enrichment. Cineplex indicated its intention to bring an application to strike under Rule 9-5(1)(a) or (b) but experienced delays, including a change in counsel in October 2024. On December 13, 2024, Cineplex delivered an unfiled notice of application to strike. However, because the notice was never formally filed and served, it did not constitute service pursuant to Rule 8-1(7) of the Supreme Court Civil Rules.

In January 2025, the plaintiff reversed an earlier tactical decision and used the "free amendment" right under Rule 6-1(1), filing a Further Amended Notice of Civil Claim (the "FANOCC") that added claims under British Columbia's Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act, consumer protection legislation from six other provinces, and a claim for unjust enrichment.

This led to an interlocutory hearing before Justice Branch on two questions: the sequencing of the defendants' strike application relative to the plaintiff's unfiled certification application, and which version of the pleading should be considered. In Bahraini v. Cineplex Inc., 2025 BCSC 1384, the Court held that since the only application ready to proceed was the defendants' motion to strike, it should be heard first — the plaintiff had failed to bring a certification application to contest priority. On the pleading question, the Court ruled that the FANOCC should be the operative document, noting that the defendants had never formally filed and served their strike application before the FANOCC was filed, and that BC law requires strike applications in class proceedings to be assessed based on pleadings as they may reasonably be amended. The Court also expressed reluctance to penalize absent class members for relatively minor procedural failings by class counsel.

The motion to strike decision

The defendants' motion to strike was heard on January 30, 2026, with written submissions received in February 2026. In Bahraini v. Cineplex Inc., 2026 BCSC 664, the Court addressed Cineplex's challenge to two specific Competition Act claims: the "drip pricing" claim under section 52 and the "double ticketing" claim under section 54.

The drip pricing claim and the section 52(7) statutory bar

Cineplex argued that the statutory bar in section 52(7) of the Competition Act precluded the plaintiff from bringing a private cause of action for drip pricing because the Commissioner had already commenced civil enforcement proceedings on the same facts. The defendants acknowledged that no Canadian court had directly ruled on this argument but advanced a detailed first-principles interpretation drawing on the text of section 52(7), comparisons with section 74.16, the legislative history of Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), and a Quebec decision in Carrefour Langelier v. Cineplex Odeon Corp. Justice Branch found that it was not "plain and obvious" that section 52(7) barred the proceeding. The Court identified multiple arguable lines of reasoning available to the plaintiff, including that the claim is brought "under" section 36 (which creates the private right to sue) rather than "under" section 52; that the defendants' interpretation would effectively create a "first to file" rule between civil claims and the Commissioner's administrative proceedings, and that if the legislature intended to impose such a dramatic restriction on civil or administrative rights, it would have been more explicit; that legislative history suggested section 52(7) was designed only to prevent simultaneous criminal and administrative enforcement; and that the Supreme Court of Canada in General Motors of Canada Ltd. v. City National Leasing had suggested there was a public interest in permitting a level of duplication where necessary to ensure that the public could be fully compensated for criminal competition wrongs. The Court emphasized it was not deciding whether these arguments would ultimately succeed, but only that they were sufficiently arguable to survive the motion to strike.

The double ticketing claim under section 54

The defendants also challenged the plaintiff's alternative "double ticketing" claim under section 54. This provision prohibits supplying a product at a price exceeding the lowest of two or more prices clearly expressed at the time of supply. The Court noted that existing case law, particularly Bergen v. WestJet Airlines Ltd. (affirmed on appeal), established that the two prices must be expressed at the same time. The plaintiff's own pleading described the first price being shown initially and the second price appearing "further along in the purchasing process" — at different stages of the same booking transaction. The Court agreed this placed the claim outside the scope of section 54. Additionally, the Court found that the plaintiff's interpretation would render the drip pricing provision in section 52(1.3) meaningless, since sequential price representations would already have been captured by section 54 if the plaintiff's reading were correct. The Federal Court's reasoning in Deane v. Canada Post Corporation, 2025 FC 1194, which struck similar double ticketing allegations, further supported this conclusion.

Ruling and outcome

Across both decisions, the results were mixed for each side. In the sequencing decision, Justice Branch allowed the defendants' strike application to proceed first (a win for Cineplex) but ruled that the FANOCC — the plaintiff's most recent and expanded pleading — would be the operative document (a win for the plaintiff). In the motion to strike decision, the defendants succeeded in having the double ticketing claim under section 54 struck but failed in their attempt to strike the drip pricing claim under section 52. As neither party achieved substantial success in either ruling, the Court ordered that each party bear their own costs on both occasions. No specific monetary award was made to either party in these interlocutory decisions; the underlying class action, including the surviving drip pricing claim and the provincial consumer protection and unjust enrichment claims, continues to proceed.