Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-19, amendments to the Competition Act. I want to preface my comments by saying that the issue we are dealing with has to do with housekeeping. There are some important changes to the act. There have been additions that I believe will benefit consumers. We will have questions at committee and the opportunity to discuss them, but overall the bill fails to address issues that were discussed in 2002 with quite a degree of public consultation.
It troubles me that we have seen a series of bills like this coming through the House already, but we want to see a greater progression of legislation and we will have to see if it carries on past that. I hope that at committee we will address some of the deeper issues.
In this bill, there is an addition of additional monetary penalties for abuses of dominance and the effects on consumers in the market. I think that is a good step. Having some type of penalty is very important, because some of the practices that are affecting consumers right now are very difficult for people to deal with, especially when they lead to the frustration that nothing will happen at the end of the day. We do not want to be in a situation where we are over-penalizing or reducing the ability of the market to be creative. There needs to be an opportunity for people to advertise and push their products in the market. At the same time, there has to be accountability.
One of the things I am concerned about, and about which I have heard of a lot of frustration from my constituents, is related to the preying on seniors. I think we should be in the forefront of that particular issue because we have an aging population and there are more opportunities for those with less scrupulous practices to prey upon seniors.
The bill would act as a framework that applies to all businesses in Canada. It now has civil and criminal law provisions, which are being discussed. The objective is to protect competition, not individual competitors. Once again, that is the way in which the bill should be moved forward. Everyone agrees on that, which is very important.
The big issue is the resources from the bureau. We know the government scaled back the bureau significantly. In the past, the government took the Competition Bureau much more seriously. Back in 1993 there was a department of consumer affairs. The department was folded into government restructuring in the 1990s and has been part of Industry Canada since then, with its budget and staffing reduced. It is very important that the staffing and the tools are available so that we can look at competition issues.
One particular example is the fact that unions, organizations and a number of interest groups brought up the issue of evergreening to the Competition Bureau. It did not have the appropriate tools to deal with the situation and had to pass it back to the government. It blocked a situation where we wanted to have an anti-competitive issue looked at because it was affecting the pricing of drugs. The Supreme Court of Canada has called the current rules draconian, while at the same time the Competition Bureau could not deal with it because it did not have the appropriate tools.
Many of the changes to the bill will be minimal, as I have noted. It is important to once again focus on the fact that we do want to have the resources available when people have complaints.
Another big issue that has been raised is the labelling of foods, an issue on which we believe the Competition Bureau should have more flexibility. Once again, consumers want to have choice. That is what it is about. They want to have the opportunity to see what is in the foods and the services they are purchasing with their money. That requires rules and regulations. If there is misguided advertising related to those products, it can affect human health and people do not get a chance to actually make the choices they want to with their money.
I will wind up quickly, because I do not believe the bill deserves much more debate at this time as it will be referred to committee and is generally just housekeeping at the moment.
We will be asking significant questions about the AMPs, the fines and such, and whether or not they will be tax deductible. A good example is that those who are fined for an environmental infraction in this country after going through a court process get back 50% of the fine as a tax write-off. It is a business related expense. I want to make sure that if there are to be fines against competitive practices, perpetrators will not be able to write off half of those fines as a business related expense. That is absolute nonsense. It is not just about the consumer being ripped off; it is about those industries and business that are competing fairly but are seeing their profits and their employees suffer because of that.
There are other issues related to that in terms of how the deductions, taxing and all those things will be related to the bill. I am looking forward to asking those questions. Hopefully we will see a further review of this act so that we will have significant changes, as opposed to this housekeeping that is happening.