Absolutely. This is something I've been talking about publicly for several years now. We need a whole-of-government approach to competition in Canada. We needed it years ago. It's overdue. It's very important for driving productivity in the Canadian economy.
There's the Australian example of the Productivity Commission in the 1990s, which took a whole-of-government look at regulations and laws that hindered competition across the economy. It was the federal government plus the states. They looked at 1,800 laws and regulations, amended them to allow for more competition and saw huge benefits. A 2.5% increase in GDP is a conservative estimate. That's $5,000 Australian per household. This is what we need to do. We're second-last in the OECD in terms of regulatory barriers to competition in this country, and that is a huge problem.
I should point out, as well, that President Biden in the United States put in place an executive order on competition several years ago that directs all agencies of the federal government to look at ways they can enhance competition in their particular area. They've been taking tremendous steps to do that. That's another example we can point to.
This is incredibly important for our country, because these regulatory barriers to competition are holding us back and holding our economy back. It's an unforced error—to use a tennis term—that we need to address. It can only be done through leadership at the highest level working with the provincial, territorial and municipal governments to attack these problems hurting our economy.