Thank you for that question, Mr. Masse.
In terms of the treatment of consumers in Canada vis-à-vis the U.S., obviously rules and regulations in the U.S. are different from those in Canada, particularly in dealing with consumer protection and antitrust situations. The antitrust laws in the U.S. are very severe, with severe penalties, including very active private class action mechanisms that allow companies and consumers to advocate before the courts and obtain damages for conduct by companies.
In Canada, it's nascent in some of the areas. Class action is available to consumers when you're dealing with cartel criminal conduct, such as price-fixing and bid rigging. On the other types of conduct, such as abuse of dominance and other market-type restraints, the Competition Tribunal is allowing access, but there are no damages provisions, so that kind of mutes the effectiveness of that tribunal. It does help free up some of the conduct to make it more competitive, but the consumer redress piece is left behind.
I think you really do have to look at the jurisdiction's consumer redress features. There I think we're behind the U.S. In terms of our legislation for competition and consumer protection, we're close. Again, we need to make some tweaks to align ourselves with the U.S. on the merger side, for example. I mentioned the efficiencies process.
In terms of consumer protection, with the recent amendments, the potential administrative monetary penalties that can be imposed on companies have increased. Again, that will just draw their attention. I don't think companies intentionally intend to discriminate between the two markets, but their attention is focused on where their costs are higher and where there's more liability. As Canada is a smaller market, I don't think it draws their immediate attention. Large markets like the U.S. and Europe are where they pay attention, and they'll get to Canada, and that's what we've seen often when you're dealing with international issues.