Thanks for the question.
It's really important to put a few things down on the table here. The American approach to criminalizing buy-side cartels, in particular wage-fixing, is pretty much unique to them. We don't have other jurisdictions that have criminalized that. In fact, there are very few jurisdictions in the world that use the criminal law in competition. They use civil remedies and other ways of going about it. What the OECD says is that we need to take cartels seriously, but we're not dictating the way you go about it. That's the first point.
We do have already a civil collaboration provision in the Competition Act. Now, I will readily recognize that section 90.1 of the Competition Act is a provision that requires proof of a substantial lessening or prevention of competition and allows for taking into account efficiencies. It is subject to the efficiencies defence just like merger review is.
That is, in some ways, a weakness. I think that's part of the motivation for creating subsection (1) of section 45, which is to create a per se offence, because then you don't have to prove anti-competitive effects.