Thank you for the question.
In my opening statement, I commended the government for taking some baby steps towards strengthening competition laws. I firmly believe more needs to be done, particularly given that its competition laws are a huge macroeconomic policy lever to deal with increased productivity and competitiveness, and that lever has been neglected, in my view,.
There are areas of the legislation that need an upgrade to deal with the digital economy. In my view, our merger controls review process has some antiquated provisions dealing with efficiencies that need to be looked at and revised in order for there to be more robust competition in Canada.
With regard to market study powers, the fact that the bureau doesn't have them means that the bureau doesn't have an in-depth study of industry sectors where there may be huge competition issues and where it could make recommendations to remove regulations that could be problematic or give other advice to governments to make them much more competitive. These tools are used in other jurisdictions, whether it is in the EU, the U.S. or Australia, and they have informed legislative change. In Canada, unfortunately, market studies that advocate are done on a voluntary basis. The bureau had some resource constraints that take away from its enforcement function. I think more attention needs to be placed on that.
Last, a competitiveness council, as I suggested, would ensure that there is some oversight in making sure that Canada has regulations and policies that promote productivity and competitiveness, very much like the United States has this Competition Council that reports directly to the White House and to the President. Something akin to that, I think, would be helpful to Canada. In the context of small businesses, clearly more competitive markets and a better marketplace referee to call fouls more efficiently will help the small and medium-sized businesses as well.