Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-23 at report and second reading stage.
First of all, I would like to say that we support this bill. Amending the Competition Act, certain provisions of which go back to the last century, is a step in the right direction.
However, we find it somewhat unfortunate that every time there is an opportunity to improve a situation, to improve a bill, to give it more teeth, and there are often arguments in favour of a complete overhaul, the government prefers a strategy of baby steps.
As I mentioned, this bill is a step in the right direction. But it is the same as the reform of the criminal code, where the government had to take two runs at it before it finally came around to what the Bloc Quebecois had been arguing for a long time.
So it is with the Competition Act. It is entirely to the minister's credit that he accepted these amendments to the Competition Act, which is toothless in Canada, if we compare it to the U.S. legislation. But the government could have gone much further.
As for what is good about this bill, one good idea is encouraging private access since, in the previous legislation, competitors were not allowed to take a case directly to the competition tribunal on their own behalf. I think that this is one notable improvement. It also improves the effectiveness and handling of complaints.
This is limited to four areas. However, they are major ones, if compared to all the complaints referred to the competition tribunal in recent years, including complaints regarding the refusal of suppliers to sell in an anticompetitive context, exclusive dealing, tied selling, and market restriction.
Tied selling is a very important matter. There was a loophole in the legislation with respect to the definition of tied selling, as well as the precise situations in which tied selling could be said to exist, and the measures which were proposed to reduce the risk of the practice.
I will give an example of just how important tied selling is. You are clients of a financial institution. You go to this institution for a loan and you are forced, or strongly encouraged, as a precondition to obtaining the loan, to buy insurance or other financial products offered by the same financial institution.
This kind of tied sales strategy by financial institutions or others is illegal. In that regard, we now have an additional tool to at least reduce the possibility of tied sales, without eliminating it completely, of course, since that is practically impossible.
The fact that interim orders can be issued in cases where a business is suspected of anti-competitive practices is a good idea. Monetary penalties also give more teeth to the legislation, particularly with regard to air carriers.
As I was saying, this is not enough. A few moments ago, the minister promised to continue reviewing the act and to look at further amendments. I would like to mention to him that the first improvement that should be made concerns section 45 of the act. This section, which dates back to the end of the 19th century, allows some form of collusion between multinationals to fix prices or to carry out other anti-competitive activities, such as predatory practices or market segmentation. These practices are totally shameful when one considers what has happened over the years in the oil industry.
Then there are price fixing practices. Our legislation does not have enough teeth to prevent that. We may have our doubts about certain price fixing practices, but we do not yet have the necessary tools to lodge formal complaints in that regard. We saw that in the oil industry in particular.
There is another element missing, namely the merger review process.
Two years ago, there was a major debate on mergers, particularly bank mergers. The debate was very productive, because it gave us a better understanding of what was going on in the industry and what its future might be in light of globalization and the opening up of markets.
On that point, we discovered some flaws in the legislation dealing with competition and we also discovered that parliament lacks the authority to review these merger issues, other than through the Minister of Finance's office, which has the final say on any merger plan and on the analysis resulting from its refusal or approval.
Moreover, when mergers are approved, we do not have the required criteria, analysis mechanisms or legislative tools to deal with any unfair practice that might occur once the mergers are completed.
The minister should examine the issue more thoroughly and maybe, in a way, copy the U.S. legislation, which offers several more remedies than the Canadian legislation.
Finally, as the minister mentioned earlier, the Liberal member for Pickering--Ajax--Uxbridge put forward amendments pertaining to normal trade conditions.
In the legislation, with regard to suppliers, for example, who are in a monopolistic situation where businesses have to buy their input from them, or in an oligopolistic market where three or four suppliers control most of the market, a provision allowing recourse to the Competition Tribunal, which requires, however, that complaints be made in a context of normal business conditions, is not good enough for this kind of market.
I will give an example. In the oil industry, the major oil companies control 85% of the wholesale market for oil products. Then what are the normal conditions in their case? Can they rely on the fact that there are abnormal market conditions, which prevent them from supplying independent retailers, small retailers for example, with crude oil or more refined oil? They can argue that conditions are abnormal, but they forget that they are the ones setting the conditions, determining the market conditions.
So, we would have liked the minister, right from the start, to accept the amendment, which came initially from one of his colleagues and which was picked up by the Bloc, because we are non partisan when the time comes to stand up for the interests of consumers and the industry.
We accept the notion that a Liberal can have a good idea. It happens from time to time. But we would have liked the Minister of Industry to accept this amendment of ours right away. There is still time to do so.
The minister could accept this amendment, which would better protect independent retailers, particularly in the oil industry. It is not really any big deal, just a small additional amendment for the government—the minister is able to do it—to remove the issue of normal conditions, and that is all.
But you can rest assured, Madam Speaker, and I would ask you to speak for us to the minister, that we will make a positive contribution to improving the legislation, because it has needed to be updated for years. It needs to be given some muscle, more teeth, in order to better protect independent retailers in a market often dominated by the big boys. We especially need to protect entrepreneurs and consumers, ultimately, from anti-competitive predatory practices, such as price fixing, as we have seen over the years in the oil industry.
By the way, the price of gas today is at 55 cents per litre, approximately. But we are still not protected—due to shortcomings in competition legislation—from practices that we believed to be predatory in the past, and that allowed gas prices to be set at unprecedented levels, to the detriment of consumers, independent truckers and the economy as a whole.