Industry Committee on May 17th, 2022

[Dr. Tony Bonen]

No, I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with it.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

I want to ask a question to Professor Iacobucci.

Your point of view was very interesting on the essence of the Competition Act. Do you think currently that the act provides or offers a fair playing field for SMEs to stay competitive? Because this study is about the productivity of SMEs.

[Edward Iacobucci]

Yes, I think there's obviously a huge range of factors, some of which we're hearing about, that go into SME competitiveness. I think I would put it in a narrower way, which is that competition policy, competition law, is about levelling the playing field across all kinds of competitors. We want entrants to be able to enter the market as freely as the fundamental economics will permit, and to be innovative and aggressive on pricing, all for the betterment of society as a whole. We're better off economically when there are competitive markets, not uncompetitive markets.

Where competition law, I think, is correctly calibrated is to protect SMEs, and other kinds of competitors frankly too, from practices that seek to limit competition. I used the example of those exclusive contracts where you're basically just trying to use exclusive contracts to make it impossible for other people to compete with you. That is not having a better product and that is not having a lower price. That's just trying to use a contractual tool—

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I agree with that. I understand that.

I'm sorry I had to cut you off. I only have six minutes.

[Edward Iacobucci]

That's okay. That's fine.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

From the macrolevel, what we've seen in the last two years—and we heard evidence today—is that small convenience stores or small SMEs are struggling to survive. Meanwhile, you have large corporations raking in historic profits. Do you think there's anything that we should do from the Competition Act perspective?

[Edward Iacobucci]

Your last point is the key one from the Competition Act perspective. There may be lots of things that are appropriate to do, and we're hearing some now—think about infrastructure for RV parks and the like—but from a competition law perspective, if large corporations are providing products at competitive prices and products that customers want, and SMEs are struggling to meet that competition, that is not a problem from a competition law perspective. Nor, at least from my perspective, do I think it ought to be a problem from that perspective.

There may be all sorts of other government tools that we should be thinking about to promote the well-being of SMEs for a variety of reasons, including the regional reasons that we heard about—northern Ontario, etc.—but it's not a competition law issue in my view.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

That's a very interesting perspective.

On that note, I want—

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Mr. Dong, I'm sorry. We'll have to move to Mr. Lemire for six minutes. Your time is up.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I worked so hard on the preamble, and I missed my chance for the question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Go ahead, Mr. Lemire.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Dong, if you want to ask your question quickly, I don't mind.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lemire.

I was going to go to Ms. Kothawala, because the study is on the productivity and also addressing the labour shortage with SMEs.

With the professor's explanation, what's your point of view? Do you think there is a need to look at it from a Competition Act perspective and from a government regulations perspective, as opposed to a simple tax cut? Is there any way that we can, from those perspectives, help your industry and SMEs broadly?

[Anne Kothawala]

I think, from our perspective, the issues that I raised are the levers that we think government can use to address the fundamental problems, and those are addressing credit card fees, helping and looking at a number of ways to address labour shortages, and ensuring that we have smart regulations and that industry is consulted when new regulations come into force. I think those are the three key levers that we would say will be helpful for our industry.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

You're not necessarily asking for some reform of the Competition Act.

[Anne Kothawala]

We haven't really weighed in on the Competition Act. I don't think that's necessarily relevant to our industry.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you.

I want to say thank you to Sébastien.

Thank you, colleague.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Dong.

My question is for you, Mr. Bonen. You gave an informative presentation. It helped us understand the labour market situation.

I gather that your organization does research to ascertain what the needs are. You don't talk about a labour shortage; instead, you refer to a skills shortage. I appreciate that distinction.

LMIC is active in every single province and territory of Canada. Would you say you are able to provide a service that, on the whole, can be useful to the government? Specifically, I'm referring to the statistical data on what is happening in every sector.

[Dr. Tony Bonen]

There are a number of tools out there already. Certainly, this is primarily the domain of Statistics Canada to be collecting this and providing that.

One of the reasons we were created by the federal-provincial-territorial ministries was to better meet the needs in the provinces and territories, since they are responsible for so much of the labour market policies. One of the programs we have, a joint program with the Future Skills Centre, is to develop a labour market data hub that feeds into a variety of programs. It's not something that is on our website. It is something that's supporting tools in different provinces, different organizations and appointment service providers. That's precisely the idea there.

Ideally, we also partner with sector organizations, as they have a lot of detailed information on what's going on in their sector, and we integrate that with the official data that StatsCan collects, which is limited in a number of dimensions just because of the realities of collecting data. We really have to partner with those local organizations that know what's going on and that can identify the skills needs they have, and then combine that.

This is a longer-term project, but that's the idea. Our emphasis is really on building those partnerships to bring everybody together on the various insights and data that others have.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Did you reach out to Statistics Canada to request that data in order to better understand the labour market situation in Canada's various regions?

[Dr. Tony Bonen]

We work very closely in partnership with Statistics Canada to identify what the labour market information needs are of various organizations. They're focused on delivering that data and that information out there, but we help them identify what's missing and relevant.

I mean, this committee is a good example of that. The job vacancy survey doesn't have cuts by firm size or enterprise size. It's one of the things that we are working to extract with them, because in theory it's potentially available in that survey. That's a labour market information need that I wasn't aware was out there. We can work with them to try to fill that gap.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Quebec has its own labour market ecosystem. It was developed by the Quebec government, the Conseil du patronat du Québec, the export manufacturers and the various labour market sector committees.

Labour market research is carried out. From your remarks, I'm realizing that other provinces could do the same thing. For employers who rely on foreign workers, having to apply for a labour market impact assessment is a cumbersome process. Mr. Dong talked about that.

Businesses have to wait months before they get the labour they need. In many cases, they have spent tens of thousands of dollars to bring the workers here.

I think your organization could seize this opportunity to bolster its mandate. If labour market needs could be identified quickly, perhaps it would help reduce wait times.

There is a consensus around the labour shortage. If the government wanted to take direct action, you could provide the government with recommendations swiftly.

[Dr. Tony Bonen]

That is an important question.

I would say that there are a number of factors that we play at. One is trying to identify the best practices in different provinces. Indeed, I would agree that Quebec is a very advanced ecosystem of organizations. Of course, Institut du Québec collects its own information as well.

I would say that this is a common challenge across provinces. There's a lot of information held by, for instance, workforce planning boards or it could be employers, or it could be those bringing people in from abroad or what have you. That information is out there, but it's not being collected and being leveraged.

That is exactly something that we want to work towards, but again, we're a small organization. Our role is really bringing those players together and sharing the best ways to do that.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

What's interesting is that you work with the provinces, because labour is an area of provincial jurisdiction.

Thank you, Mr. Bonen.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Lemire.

We now go to Mr. Masse for six minutes.