Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honourable members. It's a pleasure to be here as part of the committee’s comprehensive study on small and medium-sized enterprise issues.
I'll split my time, as the chair identified, with my colleague Alla, who is joining me virtually as well.
I think it goes without saying that this study has come at a critical time for small and medium-sized businesses, which, as many of the members will know, are engines of job creation in communities both large and small all across the country.
Despite the important role SMEs play in the economy, it has been a very challenging period for them, whether we're talking about labour shortages, supply chain disruptions, debt management issues or the looming threat of cybersecurity concerns.
These challenges, I think it's fair to say, stem from both the direct impacts of the pandemic and pre-existing structural challenges that existed within the Canadian and global economies beforehand. Certainly the economy, which was not always the most conducive to business investment before the pandemic and created difficulties for SMEs, has unfortunately only compounded those problems, along with the debt management challenges facing those businesses.
We need tangible solutions for the business community, and I want to pick up on a few of those themes that have been identified in the committee's motion to begin this study.
The first one that I do want to speak to briefly is competition policy. The chamber supports efforts to ensure that Canada's competition policy is updated for the 21st century. However, certainly we're of the view that the government needs to launch a comprehensive, multistakeholder modernization process to engage the full suite of competition policy issues and put those on the table for consideration. Certainly the drip-feed approach of having issues come up and policies changed is not going to be one that's conducive for the business community and for understanding what the legal framework is in the competition policy landscape.
There are a number of changes in the budget implementation act. We've begun to hear from our members about those and what these mean for them, and certainly we would argue that an omnibus legislative approach is perhaps not the best vehicle for undertaking those changes to the Competition Act.
There are a number of things you talk about in the act, two of which I would initially put forward for this committee's awareness.
One is around the private right of access and ensuring that there is no proliferation of frivolous cases that could be brought forward by competitors, perhaps for strategic reasons.
As well as that, the changes that have been made to administrative monetary penalties represent a quantum leap in their severity, and they may pose a potentially chilling impact on business investment in Canada. Instead, we need to perhaps look at how more weight can be put on a proportional approach to how those fines are assessed on companies.
Competition Act changes are not going to be what make a difference at the end of the day in this inflationary environment, and we need to make sure that there are no knee-jerk reactions to how we go about updating Canada's competition policy. It is a fairly critical piece of legislation that impacts the business environment in a very real way for Canadian businesses both large and small, and across many sectors of the economy.
I'll now turn to my colleague Alla to talk about some of the other changes we'd like to put forward for the committee's consideration.