Mr. Speaker, from where I left off a couple of weeks ago, a concern that I find with this legislation is the relatively broad scope of powers that it would afford with such a simple change of Canada's Competition Act.
The bill would give Canada's Commissioner of Competition unlimited powers to call an inquiry into an entire industry sector, with no evidence of any wrongdoing, and place entire sectors under scrutiny, through no fault of their own.
Not only would this investigative process cause problems by shifting the focus of a company away from its day-to-day operations to co-operating with the commissioner's investigation, it would also place a great deal of pressure upon the office of the commissioner. As I said previously, the office of the commissioner is one that exercises its authority with the utmost care and responsibility. However, with what this bill is proposing, a great deal of pressure would be placed upon the office to investigate virtually any rumour of wrongdoing by the industry sector, regardless of the grounds upon which these suspicions were made known.
I had begun to talk about our government's budget implement act in the first hour of debate on Bill C-452 and would like to finish my thoughts on that.
In March 2009 this government introduced the most substantial amendments to Canada's anti-cartel laws in over 100 years. These changes introduced an outright prohibition on agreements between competitors regarding prices, output levels or market sharing. They also significantly increased the penalties for these offences to $25 million and/or 14 years in prison. To allow business to adjust, the government also allocated a one-year period for them to review their practices and bring about compliance with these measures.
With the coming into force of these provisions on March 12, the Commissioner of Competition finally has the types of improved tools she needs to aggressively pursue and convict those engaged in the most harmful types of cartel behaviour which distort competition and undermine confidence in the marketplace.
Our government has made great strides in legislation to strengthen competition and punish non-compliance of the fundamental principle of a free market system. Broadening the Commissioner of Competition's powers from simply being investigative to the much more comprehensive level of launching inquiries may quickly prove to be ill-thought, both in terms of time and resources.
One thing our government seems to recognize more than the opposition parties is that just as anti-competitive behaviour drives up prices, so too does costly bureaucratic red tape.
In conclusion, the question that we must ask as we consider this measure is whether we as members of Parliament are willing to impose the types of burdens on businesses that would flow from this bill. Do we want to subject businesses to costly and time-consuming investigations where there is no evidence of wrongdoing? Is it appropriate to distract the commissioner's focus for enforcing the Competition Act?
We are very wary of imposing any new regulatory burdens on business, especially in light of today's harsh economic realities.