Thank you, Mr. Chair, and congratulations.
Thank you, Minister, for appearing today.
This is a very important issue. Consumers obviously are Canadians, and they deserve the protection of the government. They deserve transparency and accountability in their government, and also in their dealings, because financial dealings are quite complex from time to time.
I'd like to deal specifically with the consumer protection framework, and not only with what we've done over the last few years, in particular some of the things, like banning negative option billing for financial products. In 2009 we did quite a few things for consumers, particularly in sections 52, 53, and 74 of the Competition Act. There were some things that I thought were already in place but weren't, such as deceptive notices of winning a prize. People get mail saying they have won a prize, and it's not the truth. We took steps on that. We took steps in relation to telemarketers making false or misleading statements, and we took steps in relation to prohibiting false and misleading advertisements of regular-price items being on sale. People often label things as being on sale, but the reality is they're just the same, regular price.
Minister, could you comment generally on some of the other steps we have taken on consumer protection legislation, and why we have done that in particular?