Just as an overview of the reforms in Bill C-10, I'll give you a quick list of what the changes are and tell you how I think that impacts on enforcement.
The first change, which actually doesn't come into force until a year or so from now, is the change to the cartel, the conspiracy provision of the Competition Act, to create a more effective enforcement regime for the most egregious forms of cartel agreements: agreements among competitors of fixed prices, allocated markets, or reduced output, while not discouraging firms from entering into potentially beneficial strategic alliances, collaborations, and joint ventures.
The decriminalization of the pricing provisions will allow firms to have greater flexibility to provide innovative discounting and pricing strategies. The addition of the administrative monetary penalties to abuse of dominance, which was consistent with the recommendation of this committee, will promote greater compliance with that provision.
In the merger round we have a new merger review process that I outlined as well, which provides a more effective means for gathering information from the merging parties and reduces the number of transactions that need to be pre-notified to the Competition Bureau.
Generally speaking, there are increased penalties for the criminal provisions of the act to promote greater compliance with those provisions.