Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am extremely happy to be here. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present my thoughts on my bill.
I know competition is not a topic that a lot of Canadians think is relevant in their lives, but I believe this is fundamentally important for Canadians. I think of two examples for why this is such an important bill: food, and cellphone and Internet fees.
When we talk about food in our country right now, we're up against a really serious situation, as you know, Mr. Chair. Canadians are faced with record food bank usage. One out of four Canadians are skipping meals because the cost of food is so expensive. Canadians know that when they go into a grocery store and they're paying the highest fees ever for their groceries, on the other end of that, they have corporate CEOs who are making record profits for their corporations. They're being gouged and ripped off. That has to stop.
We know this is not something that Canadians are unfamiliar with. Back in 2018, the large corporate grocery stores and bread producers worked together to rip off Canadians with the bread price-fixing scheme. We know the cost of that was significant. Canadians were ripped off to the tune of $5 billion, but the biggest fine that was levied for one of the major players of this bread price-fixing scheme, Canada Bread Company, got a fine of $50 million.
In the scheme of things, when the collective benefit they accrued was $5 billion that they ripped off Canadians, a $50 million fine is a slap on the wrist. That has to stop.
We know that protecting consumers and fighting back against corporate greed will lower the cost of food and the cost of living for Canadians.
The other area where we know this is significant is when it comes to cellphone and Internet fees. We pay amongst the highest cellphone and Internet fees in the world. It's no surprise that as a result of merger after merger, there is a massive concentration. Just three cellphone and Internet providers make up the majority of cellphone and Internet services in our country. They are Rogers, Bell and Telus.
We recently saw a merger, which only makes things worse. The merger between Rogers and Shaw is only going to mean higher costs for consumers and fewer options. Again, this is going to make life more unaffordable. It's another example of corporate greed.
That merger should have never happened. My bill would allow for measures to ensure that doesn't happen in the future or it makes it a lot more difficult.
We know the cost of living is up and we know that corporate greed is driving it up. My bill hopes to prevent that from continuing. Stopping large corporations from ripping off consumers will lower prices for Canadians.
I believe the role of government is to strengthen and protect consumer's rights and protect consumers against exploitation. That's what I hope to do with my bill.
I want to break down some specifics to hopefully lay the foundation for your questions.
Since the introduction of my bill, we have been able to force the government to make significant changes to their existing bills to protect consumers. I want to go over those changes that have been made. These are changes to Bill C-56 and Bill C-59.
New Democrats put forward amendments to specifically increase penalties for anti-competitive behaviour and to make it easier for the Competition Bureau to go after these large corporations when they rip off Canadians.
We also specifically changed definitions to include price gouging as an offence.
We also ensured that the Competition Bureau is able to initiate investigations so it can actually identify when problems are happening, compel documents and go after corporate greed.
There have been changes now, because of what we forced the government to do, that would make it harder for mergers such as the Rogers-Shaw merger.
There are three things that are outstanding—or fundamentally two main areas.
One is the bread price-fixing that I spoke about. That remains something that is not covered in the way that it should be by the Liberal government. They've refused to put in place strengthened penalties.
If corporations are doing the crime, then they have to pay the fine. What we want to see happen is that, in the cases of large corporations working together to rip off Canadians, there should be severe and significant fines. That's something that's missing in this bill.
We think there should be certain mergers that, if they hurt Canadians, should be banned outright. Not an assessment of whether this will hurt or not hurt, or whether they should go ahead or not. If they reach a certain level, they should be banned outright. That's a change this government was unwilling to do.
I would point out that I believe the government can be a force for good for Canadians. It can fight corporate greed and make life affordable.
For decades, the Liberals and Conservatives have ignored corporate greed. They have purposely ignored strengthening the rights of consumers and ignored the tools that the Competition Bureau needs to take on corporate greed. I hope to change that with this bill. We have done some significant changes with amendments and this will finish the job.
