That's a good question.
I think ultimately SMEs have to answer that, but my take on it is that it is in dynamic marketplaces that SMEs can realistically enter the market and achieve some sort of scale in order to be an effective competitor.
Something that's really unique about markets today—in particular, markets where there's lots of data, where there are network effects—is that it's very difficult for businesses to enter those spaces and scale up. Part of that is the business model and part of that might be legitimate business advantages that incumbents have, but I think a lot of it has to do with the nature of data and the role that data can play as a competitive advantage. I think we need to ask ourselves whether we're okay with large firms having large amounts of data that they can then use to essentially hive themselves off from competition or protect themselves from new entrants that might come in and challenge their dominant position.
I think that there can be policy interventions, both through competition law and perhaps also through other policy tools like data trusts, that enable small and medium-sized enterprises to get access to this data and be effective competitors in the space.
Again, it ties into some of the themes that my colleagues and I talked about with that report for ISED that I've been referencing.