Madam Speaker, I am happy to take part in the report stage debate on Bill C-23. The bill has had a lot of work, as many members have already identified.
Four main components were originally identified in Bill C-23. They are: the co-operation between Canadian and foreign competition authorities; the prohibiting of deceptive notices of prizes; streamlining of the tribunal; and also the broadening of temporary orders. We have added an important fifth category, that of right of private access. The Bloc members are trying to make some amendments today through Motion No. 1, which I want to speak to in a moment.
It seems to me that the amendments to be made to Bill C-23 regarding co-operation between Canadian and international authorities really just are a reflection of the nature of business. More and more business is international in scope and therefore we need co-operation in these areas. These amendments concern the civil competition matters and essentially mirror existing arrangements that we already have on criminal matters with the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act. This just applies to the civil aspect.
The change will assist the Competition Bureau in gathering information it needs to make decisions affecting competition in Canada. It will ensure that the decisions about domestic competition matters are made in Canada. We support that.
We are a little more ambivalent to the second category of prohibiting deceptive notices of prizes, We cannot hold people's hands; they have to take some responsibility for their own lives. If this would help, I guess we could go along with it. There needs to be more individual responsibility. When people get a phone call and are told that they have won $100,000 but they are going to have to send in $5,000 to get it, they should be pretty wary of what is coming at them.
The third category is the streamlining of the Competition Tribunal process by providing the tribunal with the power to award costs. I think this is an excellent one especially as we move into the area of private access in order to make sure that no frivolous actions come before the tribunal. It needs that.
It also has the power to make summary dispositions and hear and determine references. The summary dispositions essentially just mean that the tribunal can consider whether it wants to hear the case or not. If it is a trivial matter or one designed to find out what the competition is doing, the Competition Tribunal can dismiss it out of hand.
In order to deal with a couple of other aspects of broadening the powers of temporary orders, that is important, especially in the case of the airline industry where a huge industry can be put out of business in a matter of a few months. The cease and desist orders do need to be strengthened with perhaps longer periods of time. This is also aimed at putting severe penalties against those companies which embark on practices essentially to put a competitor out of business. If they ignore the cease and desist order they will be hit with severe penalties.
These are all important elements. However, I would suggest that competition law, although very important, is no substitute for competition. Sometimes Liberal members on the industry committee and here in the House tend to reflect on the idea that we do not need to have healthy conditions to allow business to operate here in a very competitive manner; we can just substitute that with regulation and intervention. If that were to work in the airline industry, this country would have a thriving airline industry. We know that it has not worked.
Intervention and regulation has hurt the airline industry. It hurts most industries. I believe that competition will flourish if we have the necessary business environment to allow that to happen. That means low taxes and low regulation. Also, things like interprovincial trade barriers have to be eliminated so that we can do business inside our country as well as we can do business outside our borders.
It seems to me that while we need to have this competition law, for those who will not abide by the competitive process, it is no substitute.
I want to deal for a moment with the Bloc amendment to Bill C-23. Our concern is that we think several of the amendments are redundant because they are already in Bill C-23. They are specifically subclauses 1, 3, 4 and 5.
In regard to subclause 2, currently under the refusal to deal provisions, the tribunal can order a supplier to do business with a distributor under usual trade terms. If the amendment were passed, it would cause the tribunal to become a trade regulator which is exactly what we are trying to avoid.
It seems to me that the people who came before the committee and who probably caused this amendment to happen were from the independent petroleum producers. I asked them whether the right to private access satisfy them. They agreed it would. They said that in the past the competition commissioner would not take their case up and bring it forward. He was acting as a gatekeeper. I asked specifically if they had the right to take the case directly to the tribunal, would that satisfy them. The answer was clearly yes. Having said that, they should pursue that option and not try to make more regulations. Let them make their case before the tribunal and determine who is right or wrong on the issue and live by it.
Subclause 6 would limit the commissioner's ability to participate in a private access case. He would get 30 days to intervene and after that he could only do it if the tribunal requested it. That is not necessary.
Subclause 7 would require consent agreements to be filed with the tribunal. Then it would be as though the tribunal had ordered an agreement.
We disagree with those aspects. The others as I named before, subclauses 1, 3, 4 and 5, are already in the bill. We do not support the amendments to the bill that are presented today.
Largely, we believe that the competition policy is serving us well. It is not meant to protect a competitor; it is meant to protect competition throughout the country.
It is very clear to the Canadian Alliance that there is no substitute for a healthy business environment. All the competition policy and law in the world, all the regulation, is not going to accomplish what we can accomplish by allowing as many competitors as possible to be in business. That is the best insurance that there is good, healthy competition across the country, lots of companies competing on a healthy market basis. They will provide the kind of assurances that we need in terms of competition policy.