Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This amendment stems from a concern about vesting the minister with a serious new power, which is to review mergers and acquisitions beyond airlines in the transport sector, in federally regulated transport areas. The problem that some of us are having at the table, Mr. Chair, is that we're not sure what criteria the minister might intend to use in the review of any kind of merger or acquisition that he's being empowered to review.
I'm sure we recollect receiving a serious memo from the Competition Bureau about these provisions, raising concerns about this new power being vested in the minister and whether or not this power in any way contradicts the power or the target of the Competition Act and the role of the Commissioner of Competition to oversee all mergers and acquisitions in a Canadian context.
At first blush, when I first read this as part of Bill C-11, I was quite surprised. Unless counsel can point us in some direction, I haven't found in the federal system—which doesn't mean it doesn't exist—other areas where line department ministers have been given authority for this mergers and acquisitions types of power, which seems to be in direct conflict, or at least side by side, with the power of the Competition Bureau under the Competition Act.
What I'm trying to do is simply ask that the minister clarify, in a public way, the criteria that would be applied by the minister in making a decision about a merger or acquisition in the Canadian context. Maybe we ought to be examining what criteria are being used by this minister, whoever that person is and in whatever period of time going forward, and the criteria that are being used and applied under the Competition Act. If we have two separate bodies in the federal family conducting precisely the same review of mergers and acquisitions, using the same criteria or slightly varied criteria, what's the point? Why are we vesting this new power in the minister in the first place? That's what the amendment is trying to do.