Cineplex's $1.50 booking fee cost it $38.9 million

Cineplex advertised movie ticket prices on its website and app, then added a mandatory $1.50 online booking fee at checkout — every online buyer paid it, and the advertised price was unreachable without it. The Bureau took the case to the Competition Tribunal in May 2023 under the Competition Act's 2022 drip-pricing provisions, arguing the advertised prices were misleading because the fee was not disclosed upfront.

On 23 September 2024 the Tribunal ruled for the Bureau: Cineplex had engaged in drip pricing, and was ordered to pay a record penalty of $38.9 million — the largest ever imposed under Canada's misleading-advertising provisions — plus legal costs. Cineplex appealed; in January 2026 the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the decision and the penalty.

The amount is the message: $1.50 per ticket, multiplied across millions of sales and years of practice, and then multiplied again by the deterrence logic of the 2022 law. A fee that every buyer must pay is part of the price, and advertising the price without it is advertising a price that does not exist.