Agriculture Committee on Feb. 8th, 2024

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much for being here, and indeed it's good news to hear the pendulum's swinging and that food prices are coming down more in line with general inflation and that Bill C-56 did help.

We also have Bill C-59 right now under consideration, and you mentioned that there were aspects of that bill that you thought would be very helpful in continuing to combat the concentration and issues around competition. What, in particular, would those aspects be?

[Anthony Durocher]

Do you mean specifically to the grocery industry or just more generally?

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

I mean generally, but if that has an impact on groceries.... I think our main focus here is making sure Canadians have lower food prices.

[Anthony Durocher]

One of the most important changes flowing from Bill C-59 is opening up the Competition Act to more private enforcement so that it's not just the Competition Bureau as the sole authority that can bring cases. There are changes there that I think are capturing a lot of interest from stakeholders in the competition space. The role of private enforcement and the test for obtaining leave have been clarified, so what we might see emerge there is a more robust space where private actors, not just the Competition Bureau, can bring cases directly to court.

As I mentioned, in respect to mergers there are certain important changes. One is to allow greater emphasis on market share and concentration evidence as well. As another, there are important changes to section 90.1—which is the competitor collaboration provision of the Competition Act—with an ability to look at past conduct, which allows for a broader range of remedies too. These are examples.

Also, to give an example, one very interesting change relates to reprisal actions. It adds a new civil provision that would prohibit a party from taking reprisal action against another person for their co-operation under the act. That is a very interesting change and potentially important, because whenever companies complain to us, there's always the concern about reprisal. If you're complaining about the actions of one of your business partners, obviously confidentiality is paramount to our work. It's something we take extremely seriously and protect, but additional protections and peace of mind about lowering the risk for reprisal action are important.

These are just a few examples, but there's a lot to cover with Bill C-59.

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

We've been trying to get Bill C-59 passed since the fall, and the Conservative Party has been very against Bill C-59. Recently we found out that Jenni Byrne, who is advising the Conservative Party and joins their caucus advising their leader, is actually a consultant or a lobbyist, we could say, for Loblaws. I'm wondering.... It sounds to me as though Loblaws might not be in favour of some of these changes, but it seems that Bill C-59 is very important. Would you recommend, from your perspective in the Competition Bureau, that Bill C-59 should be passed so that we can get these measures in place?

[Anthony Durocher]

The way we're going to approach Bill C-59 is that if and when we're called to committee, we will certainly provide our views.

As I mentioned, and as was in our opening statement, there are important improvements to the Competition Act contained in the bill, and what we really want to do is help inform parliamentarians and provide whatever evidence we can in committee to help deliberations.

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

At this committee, we're looking at grocery prices. There has been progress, but we want them to come further and we want stability.

From your perspective, would it be useful in this study to recommend that the changes in Bill C-59 be adopted? Would that be useful in addressing some of the concerns you have?

[Anthony Durocher]

I think it's fair to say that some of the Competition Act changes proposed in Bill C-59 are certainly desirable and are in line, frankly, with some of the recommendations that we made in the government's consultation on the bill.

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much.

Do I have any more time, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

You have about 15 seconds, but—

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

I'll give it back to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

—you might be gracious and give that back to us.

We now go to Mr. Perron for two and a half minutes.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As you know, Mr. Durocher, the committee had previously met with the grocery CEOs, and we recently met with them again. The first time they were here, we knew that you were doing a study on the retail grocery market. I asked them to formally commit to providing the bureau with certain information, and they all said they would hand it over. You can understand my great disappointment when I read in your report that, in many cases, the bureau was unable to obtain detailed and comprehensive financial data despite its repeated requests.

You probably can't tell me which grocers failed to send you the information, but, when they were here again, I had quite the time reminding them of the commitment they had made to send you the data. I pointed out that, according to your report, not all of them provided the data, so I asked each of them whether they had done so. Funnily enough, they all said they had.

Can you give us more information on that? Can you tell us which grocers did not send you the data? I have my suspicions, since some of them aren't in favour of a grocery code of conduct, and that makes me leery. Otherwise, what kind of information did they refuse to provide? Under the new act, will they have to provide you with the information the next time you ask?

[Anthony Durocher]

I would say that the level of co-operation varied greatly. Some companies were really co-operative and provided information, while others gave us all kinds of excuses as to why they couldn't hand over the information we were looking for. Most of them provided information, but not necessarily the information we had asked for. There was a big difference in the level of co-operation. Some companies provided nothing or only information that was publicly available.

Nevertheless, we found that we had received the information we needed to make determinations and sound recommendations.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Sorry to cut you off, but I gather that you can't tell us who or which groups. Can you?

[Anthony Durocher]

No, I can't.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

I understand. Your answer was clear.

Some grocers don't want to follow a grocery code of conduct. Most of those grocers weren't even at the negotiating table or had other organizations represent them, and now, here they are at the end of the process, trying to derail the whole thing.

What do you make of a code that doesn't apply to all the players in the market? Do you think it could work, or is it doomed to fail?

[Anthony Durocher]

It's very hard to say what would work and what wouldn't. I can understand why some companies would be hesitant about a situation where some might have a competitive advantage by virtue of participating or not participating. That's possible.

We are keeping an eye on developments related to the code, but we haven't studied whether participation should be mandatory. We are co-operating and discussing the code with our partners in government. We'll have to see how it will all work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you, Mr. Durocher and Mr. Perron.

Just to let everyone know, we will be starting the third round shortly.

Monsieur MacGregor, I didn't forget you. We will go over to you for two and a half minutes. I just wanted to let everyone else know.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

These last couple of years have been incredibly frustrating for so many Canadians because of the constant rise in food prices. They can see from the publicly available data from Statistics Canada, which one of our witnesses, Jim Stanford, provided to us, that food retail profits have doubled since 2019, and even the margins.

Every time people go shopping, they see increased prices. I personally have noticed that the net weight of many of the food items I purchase has gone down while the price has either remained constant or has sometimes gone up. It's a double insult. There's an incredible amount of frustration out there.

With regard to the study that was released in June 2023, how would that study have been different or how do you think your conclusions would have been different if you had had the powers you now have under Bill C-56? Do you feel at the Competition Bureau that you would like to revisit that study and maybe make use of the new legislative powers? Can you explain the differences that now exist?

[Anthony Durocher]

Now, with the changes that have been made, we can seek a court order to compel the information to complete a study. It's difficult to hypothesize as to how it could have been different had it played out. Fundamentally, I think we were satisfied that we got sufficient information from the marketplace in what we asked for—not everything, but it was sufficient for us to make meaningful findings and recommendations.

Right now, I think our frame of mind as an organization is that we want to move from study to action by implementing and working with policy-makers to implement the recommendations and also by focusing on and prioritizing enforcement work in the sector to protect competition.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Do you have plans to revisit the issue? Can the Canadian public expect more studies in the future? Is that something you're actively working on?

[Anthony Durocher]

Everything is on the table right now in regard to our work in the grocery sector.

One issue that is a consideration is identifying where we can provide the most value for Canadians. We don't have infinite resources as an organization. We are prioritizing the grocery sector in terms of getting the most value from an investigation. Again, right now we're very much solution-focused. We're focused on the implementation of our recommendations from the study and on enforcement work in this space as well and driving those forward, but nothing is off the table. We're obviously very mindful of Minister Champagne's letter from last Monday that asked us to prioritize and made mention of a potential follow-up study.

I think these are all on the table, but we truly want to be focused on solutions rather than more study of the sector. Nothing is off the table.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.

We'll go to Ms. Rood for about five minutes and then we'll have Mr. Louis after that.