Industry and Technology Committee on Sept. 17th, 2025

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thanks.

We could take a brief break before the vote so that I can consult with my colleagues. However, I would first like to express my support for the points raised by Ms. O'Rourke. In my opinion, this provides an opportunity to inform people about the government's public policy, which affects everyone. For this reason, the situation is rather unusual. Growth, in general, is quite important. We can carry out this study now or a bit later, but I think that it must be done. This is a new Parliament. I've been told by outgoing members and more experienced members that, if we have the chance to inform people about the government's public policy, it's really a worthwhile endeavour.

I'll also add that I used to run a think tank, and when we were trying to run a bunch of studies at the same time, we never wanted one person working on more than one study at the same time. I know that there is some stress, with our limited resources here with the Library of Parliament, so I'll just share that remark as well.

However, I want to contextualize this, finally, by saying that I agree with both MP Dancho and MP Ste-Marie that there has been a lot of collaboration and that we've been able to move things forward, generally, and these are really just some issues around the edges.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Bardeesy.

The request from Mr. Bardeesy is to briefly suspend. I'm going to grant that.

This is our first day here, colleagues. We have questions from folks about how procedure works. Clearly, there's a little bit more talking that needs to occur. We're at a bit of a stalemate, so I am going to briefly suspend to provide an opportunity for the parties to discuss. I hope that, when we come out of suspension, we will resume with some type of decision to direct us forward.

We're going to suspend briefly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Colleagues, I understand there may be a path forward here. I'm going to give the floor to Mr. Bardeesy, if he is prepared and ready to let us know what's on his mind.

The floor is yours.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

We've had a nice conversation, a productive conversation—my appreciation for those who are supporting new members.

Can I just put a question forward, maybe to you and to the clerk? For motions that initiate studies, if there's a desire before the study is actually initiated, before a hearing is held, to make further amendments to the terms upon discussion with members, is that something that is required in a committee business portion, or is that something we can move at any time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

I'm not sure I fully understand the question, Mr. Bardeesy.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Okay. I'm sorry. We have three substantive study motions on the table, including an amendment. We have awareness that other committees may be doing other work, but we don't know the results of those committee deliberations that are similar, in particular on defence industrial policy. There's a possibility that the Standing Committee on National Defence may be initiating a study. We don't know. Their deliberations are happening as well.

We have these motions in front of us with studies, with some terms under those studies. I guess the question is.... We can move these motions through. We have three motions on which there's a fair degree of alignment among the parties to go ahead, or perhaps we can table them and bring one of them back—say, the defence industrial policy study—on Monday. My question is whether it is possible that we just pass these motions, and then consider an amendment to the study motion we've initiated today, if we haven't actually initiated the study yet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

All right. There's some clarity needed here. I'm going to suspend briefly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Mr. Bardeesy, the floor is yours, sir.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you, Chair. Again, I appreciate this engagement.

I know we're on debate on the amendment here, but after some discussions with colleagues, including my colleagues across the way, I think at this point I would like to move to withdraw the main motion, with an intent to come back on Monday with some amended language.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

The motion is withdrawn.

Let me reset here.

Ms. Dancho, you were next in our order of business.

I will remind colleagues that we have just a couple of minutes before we are set to be joined by the Competition Bureau commissioner.

Ms. Dancho, the floor is yours.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to move a Conservative motion, as follows:

Given that Canada's longstanding weak productivity has been a strain on government finances and affordability; and

Given the unprecedented outflow of capital investment from Canada,

The committee undertake a study, of no fewer than six meetings, on Canada’s underlying productivity gaps, and capital outflow; the Committee invite the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Industry (on separate panels), along with industry representatives, impacted stakeholders, experts, and other relevant witnesses, to analyze the causes of these challenges and potential solutions, including how the federal government can best collaborate with the private sector to boost Canadian productivity and competitiveness; and that the Committee report its findings and recommendations to the House.

I believe some of my colleagues may want to chime in, but I know that time is limited. We do want to share remarks on how important the study is to us and why we feel it's critical for this industry committee of Canada to study the unprecedented level of capital outflow in Canada to the United States, but I know that we're limited in time, so I will leave it at that for now.

It's over to you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Would you like to speak to this, Mr. Bardeesy?

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

I'd like to move an amendment.

I think there's a lot of alignment on this side of the table on this motion. I'd just like to amend the motion to remove the two clauses of the preamble, as follows:

Given that Canada's longstanding weak productivity has been a strain on government finances and affordability; and

Given the unprecedented outflow of capital investment from Canada,

My amendment is to remove those two clauses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Colleagues, are we clear? Are we able to move forward with discussion on the amendment proposed by Mr. Bardeesy without having the language provided to us?

Mr. Ste‑Marie, I acknowledge that the amendment wasn't moved in French. Is that okay with you? You're nodding.

Ms. Dancho, the floor is yours.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just so you know, we're running out of time, so in brief, we made every effort to remove partisan language from this, but certainly the facts remain. It's sometimes difficult to read them. I am a bit surprised that this amendment is being moved by the Liberals. “Given that Canada's longstanding weak productivity has been a strain on government finances and affordability”, that comes from Prime Minister Carney's mandate letter to ministers. I am surprised that Liberals are moving to remove, from a Conservative motion, Prime Minister Carney's own words, which I will read into the record just for clarity.

On May 21, 2025, the Liberal Prime Minister of Canada provided his mandate letter. It said as follows:

At home, our longstanding weak productivity is straining government finances, making life less affordable for Canadian families, and threatening to undermine the sustainability of vital social programs on which Canadians rely.

Again, those are the Liberal Prime Minister's words to his cabinet, which Conservatives have used in our Conservative motion. Now we have a situation where Liberals are not wanting to read that, I guess, not wanting it on the record and not wanting it in our motion or to really even set the stage for an important study in industry, despite the Liberal Prime Minister explaining and setting the tone for cabinet of why we need to work so hard.

I am a bit surprised, Mr. Chair. Again, these are the words of the Liberal Prime Minister that are being removed by Liberal members on the industry committee.

Perhaps I'll leave it to them to explain the rationale.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you.

Mr. Guglielmin, the floor is yours.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to my colleague Ms. Dancho for introducing this very important motion today.

As we all know, it's important to us because Canada is facing a critical economic challenge with billions of dollars leaving our country every single quarter. In June alone, a net outflow of $8.3 billion in securities left the Canadian economy. This brought total capital flight in the second quarter to an astonishing $43.7 billion. I believe that number is $63.5 billion in the last five months. Investment that should be fuelling Canadian jobs, innovation and growth is instead flowing south of the border. Foreign investors and Canadian companies are sending money abroad rather than keeping it right here in Canada.

Again, I think it's very important that we include this language with the study because we just need to highlight the severity. I think we can all agree that, as Ms. Dancho said, this is an important issue facing our country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Monsieur Ste-Marie, did you want to speak?

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

We're listening, Mr. Ste‑Marie.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

It's 5:30 p.m. and the people from the competition bureau are waiting. I expected all the motions to go through quickly, within an hour. We had plenty of time. I suggest that we postpone this until next Monday so that we can give our guests a proper welcome.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Unfortunately, that isn't a point of order. However, I understand what you're trying to do. Give me a few seconds.

Colleagues, I understand that there is agreement from the parties to move forward with adopting the language of Ms. Dancho's motion as amended.

The first thing we have to do—and I'm trying to move quickly here, so I'm just looking for unanimous consent—is confirm that we are good to adopt Mr. Bardeesy's amendment to Ms. Dancho's motion, which removes the language that he referenced.

Are we good?

(Amendment agreed to)

Seeing no speakers to the motion as amended, we need to vote on this. I'm looking for unanimous consent to speed things up.

(Motion as amended agreed to)

Colleagues, I'm now going to suspend to allow us to prepare for the appearance of our colleagues from the Competition Bureau. At the end of that part of the meeting, I'm going to take an extra couple of minutes to just very quickly come back to this to talk about how we move forward with our next week of meetings, as this took a little bit longer than I had anticipated.

We're suspended for a few moments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Colleagues, we are resuming.

Mr. Vis has just joined us. Mr. Guglielmin, Mr. Falk, Monsieur Ste-Marie, we'll get going and enter the second half.

As per our discussion at the subcommittee, there was a desire for us to hear from our colleagues at the Competition Bureau.

We're going to provide five minutes, but if you need a bit more time, we're certainly happy for you to have it.

I want to make sure I get all the titles and names right, but I don't have the names of the specific positions, other than the commissioner's. I apologize.

With us from the Competition Bureau, we have Jeanne Pratt, Matthew Boswell and Anthony Durocher.

Mr. Boswell, I presume you will be providing the commentary but, of course, feel free to split the time with your colleagues as you see fit. We'll start with five minutes. Hopefully, you don't need too much more.

What will happen then, colleagues, is that we'll enter into a line of questioning. The way that will go is that we'll begin with six minutes for members of the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the Bloc, and then we'll reduce that and see how much time we have afterwards.

With that, Mr. Boswell, I pass the floor over to you, sir.

[Matthew Boswell, Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau Canada]

Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today. It's good to be back before this particular committee, which we've been in front of a fair bit, albeit with many new faces this evening.

As the chair said, I am Matthew Boswell, and I am the commissioner of competition. I am joined today by my colleague Jeanne Pratt, who's the senior deputy commissioner of the mergers and monopolistic practices branch, and Anthony Durocher, who's the deputy commissioner of the competition promotion branch.

I would like to take my time this evening to provide a quick overview of the Competition Bureau's role and some of our recent work.

The bureau is an independent law enforcement agency that protects and promotes competition for the benefit of Canadian consumers and businesses. We administer and enforce Canada's Competition Act, a law of general application that applies to every sector of the economy, as well as three labelling statutes. Our enforcement of the act involves investigating and addressing abuses of market power, anti-competitive mergers, price-fixing, bid-rigging and deceptive marketing practices. We also advocate to all levels of government in Canada for pro-competitive government rules and regulations.

Competition is vital in our economy.

More competition means lower costs and greater opportunity for Canadians. It drives productivity, catalyzes business investment and helps ease cost‑of‑living pressures.

Over the past three years, Parliament passed three waves of amendments to the Competition Act.

These generational changes have strengthened the legislative framework to protect and promote competition in Canada. In particular, they have strengthened the competition bureau's investigative and enforcement powers, modernized merger review and created new tools to address emerging forms of market abuse that harm consumers and the economy.

The bureau is committed to using all available tools to prevent, identify and address anti-competitive activity with a focus on sectors of the economy that matter to Canadians. In the past year, this included taking legal action against Rogers for allegedly misleading claims about unlimited data; taking legal action against DoorDash for allegedly advertising misleading prices; taking legal action against Canada's Wonderland for allegedly advertising misleading prices online; taking legal action against Google for allegedly abusing its dominance in online advertising technology services in Canada; and pursuing investigations into the use of property controls in the Canadian grocery industry, including monitoring Loblaw's recent commitment toward eliminating property controls in Canada.

In June 2025, the bureau published a market study report on airline competition in Canada. We outlined how changes to policies such as foreign investment restrictions and airline merger oversight could deliver more competition, innovation and choice to Canadians.

Also, just two weeks ago, we launched a new market study of competition in the lending sector for small and medium-sized enterprises in Canada.

We have also continued to engage in public consultations and release new guidance and updated enforcement guidelines to help businesses comply with the Competition Act following the recent amendments to the law.

The Competition Act is a foundational tool to protect and promote greater competition in Canada, but it is not the only tool.

To build on the progress made in modernizing the Competition Act, all levels of government in Canada need to examine what more can be done to address the regulations and policies that hold back competition in Canada, often unintentionally.

The findings that we published after an in‑depth study show that Canada's competitive intensity has decreased over the last two decades. It will take a whole‑of‑government approach to turn the tide, with the federal government working alongside municipal, provincial and territorial governments.

In closing, Mr. Chair, I'd like to take this opportunity to note that we are at a critical moment for Canada's economy. We are facing global uncertainty, rising protectionism, technological disruption and growing affordability concerns. Competition is not a secondary issue in this context, but a foundational one. When firms and businesses face real competition, they are forced to innovate, invest and improve.

Before fielding your questions, I would note, as I always do, that the law requires the bureau to conduct its investigations in private and to keep confidential the information we have. This obligation may prevent us from discussing certain facets of our investigations or even the existence of certain investigations. We ask that you understand the limits that are on us.

Thank you very much. We look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Colleagues, the first line of questioning goes to the Conservatives.

Ms. Dancho, the floor is yours for six minutes.