Evidence of meeting #147 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was interac.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau Canada
Given that there is currently a preliminary investigation under way, it is probably best if I don't comment on any testimony and about what surprised me the most.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
The average Canadian, myself included, doesn’t necessarily know that when they do a bank transaction, it takes place in a system where a Canadian organization is responsible for evaluating or at least monitoring.
Do you see your organization as a competition watchdog?
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
You can answer in English. That’s fine with me.
Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau Canada
All right, thank you.
I would say that we do not consider ourselves an oversight body. We do not consider ourselves as a regulator. We are a law enforcement agency. Our responsibility is to investigate allegations of anti-competitive conduct or deceptive marketing. There are many different areas we investigate. Sometimes we resolve cases, and have in the past, with these consent agreements that go on for a long time. We have to take on the responsibility of monitoring compliance with those consent agreements. In that sense, we do oversee what's happening, but, generally speaking, we're not a regulator; we enforce the law.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
You just launched a preliminary investigation. Are you able to give us an estimate of how long it will take? Earlier, we asked you how far back you could go, within the framework of your investigation, to determine when those practices started.
Are you able to tell us when you’ll be able to explain what happened and whether any convictions will be forthcoming?
Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau Canada
It's very difficult to predict the timeline of an investigation, especially at such an early stage. There are so many variables in terms of what sort of evidence we feel we may need to get, who we may need to get it from and the level of co-operation that we get from parties in the market. There are too many. What I can tell you is that one of the things we're very focused on at the bureau these days, which we believe is very important, is moving our investigations faster than we have in the past. That sometimes ties into resources and electronic records and those sorts of things.
I can't give you a timeline, or even a guess. I can't even give you a guess.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Do you believe you have all the necessary powers to get to the bottom of this or other potential cases of unfair competition? Do you believe your organization has the teeth and tools needed to get through this kind of investigation and make recommendations or even impose fines?
Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau Canada
What I can say in response to that very good question is that we're in a much better situation right now than we were four years ago in terms of powers to investigate anti-competitive conduct in the Canadian economy. We have more resources than we had four years ago. We've been left to atrophy for a long time in terms of resources. We're in a much better situation. The tools we have are to a certain extent streamlined, particularly when it comes to abuse of dominance and big companies abusing their dominance in the market. We are in a much better situation and we have much better powers than we did a few years ago, sir.
Liberal
Liberal
Tony Van Bynen Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
You indicated that you're doing a preliminary investigation. If you decide to go forward, does that information come back to this committee? Where does that information go? Where do those recommendations go?
Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau Canada
We conduct the substance of our investigations in private. That is, we gather evidence and make decisions along the way if we have sufficient evidence to advance the particular case. Then, if we continue to advance it and we believe that there is a problem and that there's evidence to establish the problem, we can either take the case to court, or engage the party who's engaged in the alleged anti-competitive conduct and see if they want to resolve the issue. Our evidentiary findings would not come back here; we do that in private.
Liberal
Tony Van Bynen Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
What I'm getting at is that you're reacting to violations and infractions. To what extent are your findings able to inform the regulators?
Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau Canada
One huge component of our work is enforcing the law. Another important area of our work is providing advice to the federal government, federal regulators and provincial governments, if they invite us. We do that very frequently. In fact, by my count, in the last nine or 10 years, we've made something like 16 different submissions on competition issues in the financial sector. We've made those submissions to the Department of Finance, Payments Canada and, in one instance, to the British Columbia government. One of our recent recommendations was to Finance but about a policy OSFI had.
We have a very active advocacy role in promoting competition by giving advice to regulators. We've given advice to the CRTC many times over the last five years.
Those are our two main lines of work at the bureau. One is confidential and results in court cases, while the other is evidence-based advocacy to regulators.
Liberal
Tony Van Bynen Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
You have access. Can you require a response to your concerns, or is this all just a matter of collaboration?
Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau Canada
We cannot require a response.
Liberal
Tony Van Bynen Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Okay.
What measures is the bureau considering to ensure that the transition to open banking and digital currencies promotes a level playing field in the market?
One of the things is.... Yes, I think it's good to have competition. I look south of the 49th parallel, and there are a lot of financial institutions that have collapsed as a result of some of their decisions. How would you take a look at what's needed to get more competition into the environment? At the same time, how can we establish the financial stability that's required? Is that your role, or is it your role to advise so that people don't get into things like cryptocurrencies that disappear overnight?
Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau Canada
Going back to what I was just saying about our advocacy, we've done a tremendous amount of advocacy with the Department of Finance on open banking and the design, including to Payments Canada on real-time rail. Perhaps Mr. Durocher wants to add to that issue.
I should say that, in terms of open banking, we're way behind many countries in the world. We're way behind the United Kingdom, in particular. Those same concerns about safety were all raised in the United Kingdom and have not come to fruition, as I understand it. Clearly, there are models out there that Canada can follow while not giving up safety and security.
Mr. Durocher can expand a bit on open banking.
Deputy Commissioner, Competition Promotion Branch, Competition Bureau Canada
We've been quite active, working with the people crafting the open banking regime to try to lend our pro-competitive view.
Some critical issues, from our perspective, are in the governance of the system. These include controlling things like accreditation, who's allowed to access it and some of the technical standards that should be adopted to facilitate competition. Generally speaking, we try to bring our expertise to bear on those specific issues.
On the wider issue of competition versus stability, I would suggest that it's not a zero-sum game. With effective regulation, you can have competition increase in the sector without harming stability. I think that's a very important point in the context of enhancing competition in the Canadian financial services sector.
Liberal
Tony Van Bynen Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Is there a plan for the bureau to set up some regular reviews as some of these new things emerge, or are you solely restricted to complaints and resolving concerns? If so, what would be the principles or the criteria you've established for what you would identify as high-risk institutions?
Deputy Commissioner, Competition Promotion Branch, Competition Bureau Canada
With respect to any regulatory regime, I don't think there would be a set review by the Competition Bureau. If we're invited to participate in a review process, for example, such as a public consultation on something being proposed, we participate if we think we can bring value to the discussion and share our experience. Again, that's just advice we would provide to regulators on how to craft a system.
Generally speaking, if there's any anti-competitive conduct in a new regulatory regime, it's all about getting the facts and evidence, and reviewing potential infractions. Oftentimes, the marketplace or parliamentary committees can be our eyes and ears as to what might warrant investigation. In a given year, the Competition Bureau receives thousands of complaints. Our role is to triage them and commit our resources to potential competition infractions that are meritorious. We investigate those.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Boswell, I’m going to take the liberty of going slightly off-topic to ensure that I truly understand how the competition bureau operates.
Do you initiate investigations only when someone blows the whistle? Do you have the authority to initiate one if you have a suspicion that doesn’t stem directly from a complaint?
November 25th, 2024 / 4:50 p.m.
Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau Canada
There are many ways we can open an investigation.
We have a certain element in the bureau dedicated to proactive intelligence—seeing what's going on in the marketplace and where there might be anti-competitive conduct we should look into. We have, in fact, created a unit dedicated to providing that type of intelligence. We can find problems that way.
We are also often alerted to problems by players in a particular market who are experiencing what they believe to be anti-competitive conduct. As Mr. Durocher said, we get over 5,000 complaints a year that we have to work our way through and prioritize.
Another example is public hearings. These can raise issues, or shed light on issues, that make us determine we should look into the issue, as well.
Of course, another very important area is our relationship with law enforcement in Canada and around the world. We have very tight relationships with competition law enforcers around the world. They see problematic conduct that could be going on in multiple different countries when it's a multinational corporation.
There are many different ways we can find out about potential problems.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound
Thank you, Mr. Savard‑Tremblay.
If you’d like to ask one last question—