Industry and Technology Committee on Sept. 17th, 2025

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

Thank you.

Mr. Boswell, you may take all my allotted time to answer my next question.

I would like to understand the challenges faced by your bureau in dealing with the web giants. I'll give you two examples.

Last April, La Presse ran the following headline: “The Competition Bureau responds to Google.” The article reported that your bureau “responded to Google in its ongoing lawsuit concerning the tech giant's advertising practices in Canada, accusing the company of seeking to conceal its alleged anti‑competitive practices.”

My second example concerns another article published in La Presse. On July 8, 2025, the article stated as follows: “The Competition Bureau obtains a court order.” The article focused on Amazon's fair pricing policy.

In general, how can your bureau deal with the web giants?

[Matthew Boswell]

Mr. Chair, I want to thank the member for his question.

This is an issue that, as the honourable member points out, the bureau is very active in.

As the honourable member points out, we have three active public investigations into large digital platforms. As I said in my opening statement, we have initiated a lawsuit against Google at the tribunal. Our pleadings and all the information we've put forward to the tribunal at this point in time are available from the Competition Tribunal. It's best if I don't get into further details, but the case is before the tribunal and we're moving forward with that.

We have two separate investigations into Amazon's conduct in Canada. One is in relation to its pricing policies on its sales platform, and the other is with respect to fake reviews on the Amazon platform. I can't say much more about those, other than that they are proceeding.

We are engaging with Amazon in certain court matters as we move forward. These align with the bureau's priority to focus its efforts on areas that matter to Canadians and to become a leading competition agency among global competition agencies in enforcing the law in the digital economy, which really is the modern economy. We all interact with these platforms all the time, and it's very important that we're vigilant on the conduct going on on these platforms.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Ste‑Marie.

Colleagues, we have five minutes for the Conservatives and five minutes for the Liberals, which will conclude the amount of time we have for questioning today.

Mr. Falk, the floor is yours, sir.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses here: Mr. Boswell, Ms. Pratt and Mr. Durocher. Thank you very much for your attendance and the information you're providing.

I, too, was going to focus a bit on the grocery sector. As I look around in some of the communities in my riding in southeast Manitoba, I've noticed that a lot of the small grocers really struggle. Some of them close because they just can't seem to make it. I also noticed that the people who have to use a lot of the smaller grocery stores and outlets are people who have mobility challenges and can't drive to the big box centres. The pricing is always more expensive in the smaller outlets.

I'm wondering if it's not similar to the issue that Ms. Dancho asked about with regard to the financial institutions and whether there's an Interac funnel that needs to be addressed. My understanding is that a lot of the small grocers have to buy from a limited number of distribution centres, and these are often owned by the larger players in the industry.

Can you comment on that and on what can be done? The cost of food is something that everybody talks about.

[Matthew Boswell]

Absolutely. It's a very serious concern to all Canadians now, and it has been for some time. We saw in 2023 that grocery prices were rising faster than they had been in 40 years.

In our grocery market study report, where we did a deep dive on what was really going on and what the competition issues were in the grocery sector, one of the findings we made, and also what we heard from people we spoke to, was that independents, or smaller grocery stores, were finding it harder to compete. They relied on wholesale, which was owned by the larger incumbents. That really hurt their ability to compete with the larger incumbents. We also saw new models that were trying to emerge, which had no retail site and were strictly delivery, but the problem once again was that they would have to rely on the wholesales that are controlled by the larger players. That definitely presents a problem in Canada.

In terms of what you communicated about only smaller stores being in certain areas, that is also partially tied to the property controls issue. Where it goes even further, you have what are called food deserts—

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I think I have to cede my time here.

[Matthew Boswell]

I'm sorry.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you. I know that could be a very comprehensive answer, but I appreciate what you provided.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Who are you ceding your time to?

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Ms. Borrelli.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Ms. Borrelli, the floor is yours for two minutes.

[Kathy Borrelli, Conservative, Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Boswell, former minister Navdeep Bains wrote a letter to you back in 2019 as you assumed your new role as the commissioner of competition. Within that letter, Mr. Bains emphasized creating a competitive environment where small and medium-sized enterprises can thrive. Recent numbers have shown a 3.8% jump in insolvencies from 2024 to 2025. My riding alone has a rate that's one of the highest in the country.

Mr. Boswell, what concrete steps has the bureau taken to ensure that small and medium-sized businesses aren't squeezed out by the bigger companies?

[Matthew Boswell]

Thank you. It's a very important question. That centres generally on our abuse of dominance investigations, where big companies are using anti-competitive conduct to try to squeeze out or kill other competitors.

Obviously, we have active investigations in that area, but it's also an issue where we get a lot of complaints and we have only a limited amount of resources to advance those investigations. We do what we can. As I alluded to earlier or spoke about, we have to prioritize, but that is the role we can play—to be vigilant for anti-competitive conduct and to take action to the extent that we can, with the resources we have, to stop that anti-competitive conduct. I guess the caveat is that we are it for the entire country. We have about 450 people. We do as much as we can, but we can't be everywhere all the time.

That's probably not a good answer, but it's an honest answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much, Ms. Borrelli.

Mr. Bardeesy, you'll conclude with five minutes.

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

Thank you.

Thank you to you and those hard-working 450 folks who do that work.

I just want to ask a couple of questions about the new study you've initiated on financing for small and medium-sized enterprises. There's not a lot of current data on this phenomenon. Industry Canada does a study every two years, which you refer to in your framing paper. It notes, “SMEs appear to have received less new credit, while larger businesses received more. For example, in the second half of 2023, the number of new loans to small businesses dropped by 19%, whereas larger businesses have seen a rise of 14.4%.”

I understand that, as you mentioned, this study is focusing on term loans. What kinds of sources of data are available to the Competition Bureau that will help inform this study?

[Anthony Durocher]

Well, I can speak right now to the motivations to launch the study itself, which were based on observations that you mentioned and studies, as well, that suggested that it's in the public interest to examine what's happening. It goes to the core of small and medium-sized enterprises in Canada. They are the backbone of the Canadian economy and are critical for productivity, for innovation and to bring competitive intensity in all sorts of markets across Canada.

Some of the data that we referenced and that you mentioned.... Another is just the disparity between the interest rates paid by small and large businesses. It appears—and this is based on a study cited by the OECD—that in Canada the disparity is bigger than in other countries. That is prompting us to ask why that is. We know that the financial sector is concentrated.

Right now, we're at the stage of our study where we're considering views of stakeholders for 30 days as to the scope of the study. That is going to inform the breadth of the issues that we're going to be examining, where we're going to get our data from, and stakeholders as well. We look forward to hearing from all interested stakeholders. From our perspective, this is a very important study, given the importance of small and medium-sized businesses to the Canadian economy.

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

Something that I've heard in my riding—and I think it is a common experience of others and perhaps even other members in their own past private lives—is that financing decisions that used to be taken more locally, at the branch level or the regional level, are now being more centralized in the head offices or in other centralized operations of the major financial institutions. Is there any qualitative evidence, or is there any examination of that issue as part of your work?

[Anthony Durocher]

That's an interesting observation, and I think it is exactly the type of information that we want to hear from Canadians right now to get to the heart of the issue as to how competition is working—looking at, for example, barriers to entry for new, smaller lenders, such as fintechs, to grab a foothold in the market and bring innovative services to offer a greater diversity of products and more financing options for SMEs.

We're also looking at switching costs. That's the ability for a small or medium-sized enterprise to expand or invest in new machinery, looking at its ability to play the competition off each other and to switch suppliers if it sees a better deal elsewhere.

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

Is there a study to look at the special financing needs of, or to look at whether there are any further disparities within the sector for, minority-owned or women-owned SMEs, which might face even further barriers and where these statistics might be even worse than what you've already cited?

[Anthony Durocher]

I think that is an area we will be examining, and we hope to hear from Canadians on that very issue. We have certainly taken note of some data in that regard, about the lack of financing for certain groups. It also goes to the importance of competition to provide options and opportunities for all Canadians.

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

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Bardeesy.

Witnesses, thank you very much for appearing. We are going to conclude. We're going to continue briefly with a little bit of committee business that we have to attend to, so please feel free to just pack up quietly and be on your way. We very much appreciate your taking the time to present here.

Thank you for speaking to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology. Have a good evening.

Colleagues, I'm just going to move us very quickly back into committee business.

Mr. Ste‑Marie, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The committee received two motions that I would like to move and have adopted. They reflect the status of the negotiations that took place in the subcommittee with the different parties.

I understand that the motion proposing a study on artificial intelligence would require further discussion. I'll move it at the next meeting. However, I would like us to quickly adopt, if possible, the following motion to invite the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Industry, to appear before the committee to share her vision for her mandate and the various potential studies and to answer our questions:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(3), the committee invite the Minister of Industry, Science and Economic Development and the Minister responsible for Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions, Mélanie Joly, to appear before the committee for at least one hour on the topic of her mandate, including the subjects of the studies that the committee has initiated.

The motion was sent to the committee members.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Ste‑Marie.

Ms. Dancho, the floor is yours.