Maple Leaf Foods has filed court documents arguing it should not be made part of a class-action lawsuit over price-fixing prices for bread and buns.
The company has been sued because the federal government has argued that it and Weston Bread, plus a number of supermarket chains and food retailers, conspired to hike prices.
Weston has pleaded guilty and paid the federal government a record-breaking $500-million fine and offered customers of its Loblaws-owned supermarkets, including Zehrs Markets, $25 vouchers.
Maple Leaf and Canada Bread, which it owned at the time, denied wrongdoing.
Bimbo Bakery of Mexico has since bought Canada Bread and it has argued that it is innocent and the price-fixing must have been done by the previous owners.
Michael McCain, at the time the president, chief executive officer and majority shareholder of Maple Leaf Foods, denied any involvement in the scheme, saying that was all Canada Bread staff.
But he also said at the time that what was done “was consistent with industry practice and, above all, lawful.”
Maple Leaf is saying on its website now that it “has done nothing wrong.”
