Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this morning to speak to Bill C-19, an Act to amend the Competition Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. But first, I would like to congratulate my hon. colleague from Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, who summarized earlier the position of the Bloc by highlighting the flaws and omissions of the bill as well as the improvements that could be made. It is important to understand what is going on.
Before moving on to the subject at hand, that is, the bill before the House, I would like to talk about the principle of competition itself. Competition is not a bad thing. Competition is about a free market based on the free movement of goods and services. Our whole economic system relies on the classic economic theory of supply and demand. Therefore, for our system to work well, businesses must be free to produce the goods they want to produce. And they must also be free to sell their goods under various conditions, and consumers must be free to accept the goods. Of course, that leads to competition among businesses fighting for customers.
The problem in our market economy is not competition but rather the cases of abuse of competition as clearly defined in the bill. It deals with cases of abuse of dominant position and deceptive marketing cases. To smother or get rid of a competitor, businesses have no qualms about relying on deceptive marketing practices. We see it every day. Advertising is all about unfair competition.
There is also price discrimination. It is common practice that competition can still be distorted through pricing. There is also dishonest promotion. We are submerged by it every day. Moreover, geographic discrimination is such that competition hampers the free circulation of goods and services. The consequences of a unfair competition can surely be dramatic for a business and for clients, but also for a region. Every time I have an opportunity to talk about it, I obviously talk about my region, the asbestos region. Our resource, chrysotile asbestos, has been suffering for several years from unfair competition on the part of businesses which have replacement products. All means are used. There are international conspiracies to annihilate an economy and a region through unfair costs, which have become commonplace. In a system where competition is distorted, not only companies, but regions can be destroyed.
A careful look at the wording of Bill C-19, reveals, as my colleague was mentioning, that improvements have been made and that some very positive things are to be found in the bill. Besides, sanctions are in place to compensate people who have been misled. I think usual and a good thing in the proposed legislation. There are even sanctions including an injunction to block the distribution of some goods.
Let us look more closely at the summary of the bill. It amends the Competition Act, first providing authority for the commissioner of competition to seek restitution—as I said earlier—for consumer loss resulting from false or misleading representations.
That is obviously the minimum a bill would need to be effective. If there are no sanctions, why bother having a bill? Here, too, it would increase the level of administrative monetary penalties. I think that will discourage quite a few. These administrative monetary penalties will be imposed for deceptive marketing practices. Thus, there is considerable work to be done on this.
A general provision would have to be put in place to introduce administrative sanctions for abuse of dominant position in any industry. This is something we see every day, very regularly. There are cases of dominance in the industry, which interfere with the market economy and competition and which, as I mentioned, have disastrous consequences not only for clients, consumers and businesses, but also for regions.
There is also a clause that removes the airline-specific provisions from the act to return it to a law of general application.The bill also makes other amendments.
As I said, this is the minimum that should be found in a bill that aims to fight unfair competition, dishonest practices and false advertising. Unfortunately, Bill C-19 does not go far enough, as my colleague has said. It is incomplete.
A standing committee was responsible for making recommendations to improve it, to make it a complete bill. As my colleague mentioned, many additions were not included in the bill, and they are still not there today. Thus, the standing committee did not receive a positive response to its 29 recommendations.
There are at least three recommendations I want to stress. The Bloc Québécois has identified them, and in our opinion, they not only should be part of this bill, they could improve it and would be remarkably effective.
For example, we can look at recommendation No. 9, which would permit a party to a contested proceeding to refer to the Competition Tribunal a question of law, jurisdiction, practice or procedure in relation to the application or interpretation of these parts.
This is important. A party, be it a merchant or someone else, who feels that it has been wronged and that justice has not been done will eventually be able to go to the tribunal. We know that today, in the current context, unless the bill is amended, only the commissioner can bring such matters before the tribunal, or else both parties can do so, provided they are in agreement.
I think this should be included in the bill, so that no party is wronged and that it is possible and easy for either party to be heard.
There are other recommendations. My colleague referred to them earlier. I would like to focus on the one dealing with creating a two-track approach to offences, here again promoting greater efficiency. The legislation, on the one hand, deals with conspiracy and, on the other hand, with any other type of agreement with respect, for instance, to restrictions to competition. This absolutely must be well defined. Also, subject matters, purposes and proceedings all have to be clearly identified, if any positive results are to be achieved.
On the subject of conspiracy, I gave an example earlier. Conspiracies are not always obvious. They can be very difficult to prove because, very often, things are done indirectly that could not be done directly. Disinformation is used—with abandon. There are not necessarily any identifiable practices in place, making conspiracy very difficult to prove.
The consequences are obvious, however. Businesses suffer, as do their clients, consumers and the regions also, as I indicated earlier. In my opinion, and it is also the opinion of the Bloc Québécois, proper identification of conspiracies is necessary.
Another recommendation is to permit questions of law to be considered by all the members sitting in a proceeding, whereas only a judge can do so at present.
If I may make a final comment, nothing in this bill indicates that these offences will remain illegal after this legislation is passed.
Under the circumstances, as my hon. colleague said, the Bloc Québécois figures that important additions ought to be made to the bill. Therefore, the Bloc Québécois is in favour of referring the bill to committee but is reserving judgment on the substance of the bill.