Last month, Canadian regulators began an investigation into allegations of price-fixing involving Hershey Co. (NYSE: HSY), Cadbury Schweppes PLC (NYSE: CSG) Mars Inc. and Nestlé SA (VTX: NESN).

Now our own Justice Department is looking into the issue as well. Chocolatiers have been battling with surging dairy prices and there have been allegations that various firms colluded to fix prices. Ontario's Superior Court of Justice has granted search warrants for the above candy makers, but no charges have been filed.

According (subscription required) to the Wall Street Journal, "It isn't clear precisely what the Justice Department is looking into or whether the preliminary inquiry will become a formal criminal investigation. Price fixing can be a serious offense, leading to heavy fines and, in some cases, jail terms for executives."

The legal issues aside, does anyone really think that lack of access to affordable chocolate is a serious problem in the United States? Judging from The US of A's collective waistline, a little price fixing and consumer gouging could do our body mass indexes a bit of good.

My recent Investing in Ontario post took a look at the Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE: RY), Manulife Financial Corp. (NYSE: MFC), and Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE: TD); three public companies examined by the Motley Fool this past summer.

However, Ontario is more than just Canada's financial center. Its abundance of resources and location on Great Lakes have made Ontario a manufacturing powerhouse, including steel production and automobile manufacturing in southern Ontario, and mining and forestry in the north. Toronto is Canada's film and media center, as well as an important tourism destination. Niagara Falls is one of world's most popular tourist destinations. Other Ontario companies the Motley Fool liked include Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM), Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE: NT), and IMAX Corp. (NASDAQ: IMAX).

Research in Motion (RIM), Canada's largest public company, is well know for its BlackBerry smart phones, but it also provides software development tools and produces radio-based modems used in portable devices. The consensus recommendation of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial is to buy RIM, and has been since April. RIM met analysts' earnings per share estimate when it reported second quarter FY2008 earnings in early October, and Wall Street expects EPS of 62 cents in the third quarter, double the 31 cents actual from a year ago. RIM has a five-year EPS growth rate of 73.5%, easily beating the S&P 500 and the technology sector average. RIM's share price has been climbing since a share split in August, to reach a 52-week high of $128.36 on Tuesday; it opened today at $124.75. Also this week, RIM announced plans to sell the BlackBerry in China, and introduced Facebook for the BlackBerry as well. For more on Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) challenge to RIM and other RIM-related news, see Bloggingstocks' RIM coverage.

Its abundance of resources and location on the Great Lakes have made Ontario an economic powerhouse. Canada's capital, Ottawa can be found there, as well as its largest city, Toronto, which is also Canada's financial hub. Seven of Ontario's eight largest companies are financial institutions, and Toronto is also the home of one of the largest stock exchanges in the world. When the Motley Fool took a look at stock investment opportunities in Ontario this past June, three of the companies they focused on were financial institutions: Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE: RY), Manulife Financial Corp. (NYSE: MFC) and Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE: TD). Considering the credit crunch and the weakness of the U.S. dollar, I thought it might be interesting to see how those companies are faring now.

The Royal Bank of Canada, also known as RBC Financial Group, is Canada's largest financial institution. It has 1,300 domestic locations and offices in 30 countries. In September, RBC's Gord Nixon won Canada's Outstanding CEO of the Year award for 2007. More recently, RBC announced the acquisition of a Caribbean bank, and it was one of four Canadian banks affected by restructuring at VISA. With RBC's five-year earnings per share growth rate of 26.5% (better than the S&P 500), the consensus recommendation of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial is to buy RBC, despite missing earnings expectations for the past two quarters. RBC's share price is near an all-time high on the NYSE, closing Thursday at $57.09 on the NYSE. RBC will release its next quarterly report on November 30.

One of the most interesting stock scams I can think of is back in the news, with John Felderhof, a former geologist and executive at the company, being acquitted on charges of insider trading and misleading investors in the Bre-X fraud.

The mining company began as a penny stock and at one time sported a market cap of CAD $6 billion before collapsing. It turned out key samples had been "salted," meaning that the huge gold reserves the company claimed to be sitting on did not exist.

The story is filled with intrigue -- one key geologist ostensibly died in a plane crash but rumors continue to swirl that he is alive and living in hiding.

As for Felderhorf, he was not at his own trial. According to the New York Times, "He is believed to be living in Bali, although his wife said in a published interview this week she thought he was living in Canada." Sounds like a great relationship.

To learn more about the fascinating story of the Bre-X fraud, check out Bre-X: The Inside Story. It's not the greatest business book ever, but for 57 cents used on Amazon, it's worth picking up.

If you're looking for poorly-written, amateur press releases for entertainment reading, Pink Sheets stocks tend to be a good source of material. A few days ago, Sulja Bros. Building Supplies Ltd. (OTC: SLJB) released the goofiest one that I've ever seen -- and I follow these things pretty closely.

First, some background on the company: SLJB, a Windsor, Ontario based construction supply store, soared to a high of around 20 cents a share in September of 2006, as the company issued a string of press releases announcing lucrative contracts in the Middle East. For instance, on September 5th, the company announced that it had closed a cement contract in the United Arab Emirates which would generate $350 million (US) in annual revenue for the tiny lumberyard.

The stock's huge upward movement and volume raised the eyebrow of a local reporter who visited the company's office, and wrote a piece essentially saying that the reality of the company didn't seem to match up with the claims of hundred million dollar contracts. Pretty soon, the Ontario Securities Commission had halted trading of the stock (although it still trades OTC in the US) and charged the company and its officers with issuing false press releases and manipulating the trading of the stock while dumping millions of dollars worth of stock -- a classic pump and dump.