Ryan Williams

[Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, December 11th, 2023]

I am sorry, Madam Speaker. I did not even realize I did that.

Here are the mergers that have gone through: Air Canada and Air Transat in 2019, approved by the Competition Bureau; Rogers and Shaw in 2022; RBC approved to buy HSBC in 2023; WestJet buying Sunwing in 2022; Superior Propane buying Canexus in 2018; and Sobeys approved to buy Farm Boy in 2018. The hypocrisy knows no bounds.

[Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, December 11th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, let us talk about hypocrisy, then, for a minute. Here are the mergers that have been approved by the Competition Bureau since the Trudeau government has been in power: Air Canada was approved to buy—

[Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, December 11th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I can speak for 20, 30 or 40 minutes about this important topic. I am happy to stand in the House today on the report stage of Bill C-56.

We have been talking about competition quite a bit in the House, including the need for competition and the lack of competition. We know that Canada has a competition problem. We see it in every sector that Canadians are a part of, including cell phones, banking, groceries, wireless and Internet. There is not really any sector in the Canadian economy that is not dominated by oligopolies and monopolies.

When this bill came along, we looked at it favourably because certain aspects were going to be improved. Mostly we looked at it favourably because there were Conservative aspects that were part of it, including my private member's bill, which was read into the act. Of course, I have a new private member's bill. We are all happy for that, and we are moving on.

The crux of the bill, the affordable housing and groceries act, is really anticlimactic in that, when this bill receives royal assent and becomes law, it will not really change the fact that Canadians are still paying the highest grocery fees and are in the worst housing crisis in this country's history. That is because the bill does promise to make some changes to the Competition Act. This bill would do some minor tinkering around the edges for what we need to have changed in the Competition Act. However, it does not do the real hard work. It does not have the courage to change the real things that need to happen to change competition in Canada.

The bill would enact Competition Act changes. It would certainly make some provisions and changes to the abuse of dominance. It looks at illuminating the efficiencies defence, which was in my private member's bill that came forward. It looks at how market studies should be handled by the Competition Bureau itself.

However, when it comes to the real aspects that are hurting consumers at the grocery store right now, where they are paying 20% more for groceries after eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, it does not tackle the biggest aspect, which is the carbon tax. The carbon tax is added to the farmer, to the trucker, to the manufacturer, to the cold storage facility, so it is added one, two, three, four times to the consumer bill and passed on to the consumer.

It certainly does not tackle the fact that, when it comes to housing in Canada, we are building fewer homes now than we did in 1972, when we have over 40 million Canadians in this country right now. It certainly does not tackle the fact that, because of high inflation after eight years, the costs of everything have gone up, including building materials and labour for homes. The fact is that over the years, we have built up a big barrier of what we call Nimbyism, protecting our backyards from others so that we cannot build homes.

Consumers are stretched. Mortgage renewals are coming due. Over 70% of Canadians with a fixed mortgage will have to renew their mortgage over the next two years, this during the fastest run-up of interest rates in the whole history of this country.

The carbon tax had unintended consequences, and consumers are screaming. They were promised that they would get more back in rebates than they put in. However, the unintended consequences have been that those carbon taxes have added costs to grocery bills. Those added costs are on the price of almost everything that Canadians are paying. They see the rebate in their hands, compared to the bills they are paying each and every day, and Canadians are smart. They now know that they are paying way more in those carbon taxes than they are getting in rebates. After eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, Canadians cannot afford any more.

We have looked at competition, and we have looked at the two parts of the act that we need to solidify. One is to put a stranglehold on how big the big, bossy, dominant conglomerates, oligopolies and monopolies can get in Canada. Canadians have had enough, whether it is cell phone bills, where we have three companies that control 90% of all cell phones in Canada, which are the most expensive three carriers out of 128 carries in 64 countries, or whether it is groceries, where we used to have competition in Canada. Eight grocery stores used to run and compete with one another, driving prices lower. It is now down to only three Canadian companies competing with two American conglomerates. They used to all be Canadian competitors. We used to be able to go to different stores. Now Canadians find that they oftentimes going to the same competitors.

Obviously, prices have not gone down, and this is only after the last eight years with a Competition Act that was outdated. It has certainly outlived its prime, since the Competition Act was created based on the 1960s industrial policy, which said, “We want Canadian companies to get as big as possible to compete internationally.” It is actually in the purpose clause of the Competition Act right now to make Canadian companies as big as possible so that they can compete internationally. This is what we deem as competition. When it comes to competition, we want more companies to compete, not internationally but to compete for Canadians' dollars. Canadian companies should not be able to make all of their money on the backs of hard-working Canadians; Canadian companies need to compete with one another for Canadians' hard-earn tax dollar.

The breadth of this Competition Act, which needs to be changed, is the premise and the purpose of the Competition Act. Number one, we need to ensure that big-box conglomerates and corporations cannot get bigger on the backs of hard-working Canadians. However, the second and most important aspect of the Competition Act is to ensure that we have competition or that we have start-ups in Canada.

Canada now, according to the BDC, has 100,000 fewer entrepreneurs compared to 20 years ago, despite our population increasing by over 10 million people. Canada has failed to create competition. We can look at one aspect to say that we would really love to make sure that we stifle the top monopolies and oligopolies and make sure that they cannot merge with one another, but the other big problem we have missed along the way is to have start-ups created to compete with one another. It used to be that Canada was the bastion for that, and we were able to find start-ups and have great Canadian companies start up and grow in scale, but for the first time in our history, we have fewer start-ups per capita than ever before, after eight years of this government.

When we talk about new jobs and creating wealth in this country, which is something I am afraid we are going to have to speak about a lot over the next year, we look to small business and start-ups to fulfill that role. Ninety-seven per cent of all new jobs in Canada are created by small business. When we look at the complexity and the value of these small businesses, the men and women who can take a risk and start something new in Canada, right now what we are missing most of all is to ensure that we create those jobs and businesses in this nation.

At the end of the day, we have to really look at what this bill would do and what it would not do. We are certainly going to vote for this legislation. At the end of the day, the Competition Bureau itself has been ignored for the last eight years. Coincidentally, the first time that this government starts talking about it is when the opposition leader names a competition shadow minister for the first time in government, which looks at the importance of what competition can do for the nation and what it means for Canadians. Of course, the first thing it means is prices, and the second thing is our jobs and paycheques. We can create new start-ups and new businesses.

For instance, when we look at the banking sector, the biggest thing we are trying to put forward is consumer-led or open banking. There is an opportunity, where this government has been dragging its feet, to create hundreds upon hundreds of financial tech institutions that can not only create jobs and paycheques for Canadians, but provide options for Canadians of where to put their hard-earned money when it comes to financial services in Canada. I would hope that through this, and we will be talking about it when we get back in January, the government introduces the legislation that it promised in 2018.

More importantly, as Bill C-56, the affordable housing and groceries act, comes forth, Canadians are going to be angry about how anti-climactic it will be. Grocery prices are not going to go down after the bill passes, nor will our housing crisis be solved. It would do something important for the Competition Act, but not nearly enough to undo what has already been done. Most importantly, it would not create the start-ups that have stopped, the start-ups that can drive housing starts and create more options and more food in the value chain.

We need boldness, and we need courage. We need a new government to present policy that would actually create homes and grow food without punishing our farmers in this country. It is time to bring it home for farmers, for our country and for Canadians looking for a home of their own.

[Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, December 11th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, before I begin, I would like to ask for unanimous consent to share my time with the hon. member for Lévis—Lotbinière.

[Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, December 11th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, competition is at the front and centre of everyone's minds right now, especially when Canadians are paying the highest grocery bills ever in the history of this nation. Even the report that came out last week said that grocery bills in 2024 are going to go up still another $700 per family, and they are struggling now just to buy the basic necessities.

Could the member please tell the House what exactly this bill would do to lower that $700 bill per family next year?

[Committees of the House, November 30th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his hard work and for contributing to the debate.

Bill C-27 has a lot of different aspects, but here are the worst parts of them.

There is a provision called “legitimate interests”, which allows businesses to collect data, but there is no real definition as to what they can use that data for. It is so obscure that, right now, without a clear definition, we are not going to be able to get it through. There is no instance in the purpose clause or in the bill of privacy being a fundamental right, and that is something Conservatives have been fighting for. We are the only party, really, fighting to have that in.

When it comes to AIDA, the third part we are trying to split off, when I asked witnesses at committee about three weeks ago to rate it from one to 10, one being bad and 10 being the best, six out of seven rated it a one out of 10. That piece, without public consultation, which did not happen, needs to go. It needs to be split off, and that is why we are asking for the motion.

[Committees of the House, November 30th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to hear the member talk positively about consumer-led banking, but I am extremely disappointed that, after speaking this morning, he voted with the government, as he often does, to shut down debate on the RBC and HSBC merger, which is going to hurt Canadians. RBC is trying to buy 800,000 mortgage holders, which is a great thing for RBC, because it would just take them out of the market and move them into its bank. However, the reality is that 10% of Vancouver mortgage holders and 5% of Toronto's mortgage holders, in the hottest and third-hottest housing markets in all of the world, are going to be gobbled up by RBC. There is an 85-basis-point difference in mortgage rates today between the two competitors. We are going to have more people who need help in Vancouver and Toronto. They will be falling behind and paying more. By the way, it is about $400 a month more on a $500,000 mortgage, which is low for a mortgage. We should have been allowed to debate this today. There should have been a vote to shut the merger down. I am disappointed in the member because he shut debate down.

[Committees of the House, November 30th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, let us talk about hypocrisy. The government has voted to shut down debate on competition in the banking sector in Canada today, and there is a housing crisis that is the largest and the worst in the whole world. Then again, the member likes to talk about Stephen Harper. The member must be so proud today that he was mentioned in The Globe and Mail editorial that talked about his party's obsession with Stephen Harper. Over here, we have our glasses of water, and every time Harper is mentioned, we drink. There is always lots of water to drink, because the member likes to blame everything on Stephen Harper. However, the reality is that there have been 12 mergers in competition, in banking and in telecom approved under the government's watch over the last eight years. This includes propane company mergers, Sobeys and IGA, and Sobeys and Farm Boy. The government, over the last eight years, has approved so many mergers. That is hypocrisy.

[Committees of the House, November 30th, 2023]

moved:

That it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology that, during its consideration of Bill C-27, An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts, the committee be granted the power to divide the bill into two pieces of legislation:

(a) Bill C-27A, an Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, and an Act to enact the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act, containing Part 1, Part 2, and the schedule, to section 2; and

(b) Bill C-27B, an Act to enact the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, containing Part 3.

Mr. Speaker, I am very disappointed that we are not talking about housing, and about RBC and HSBC, in the House today. After eight years, this country is in the worst housing crisis we have ever had. We just have to talk to any constituent to see exactly what is happening.

Before I get into that, I want to mention that I will be splitting my time today with the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill.

When we talk about housing, it is absolute ludicrous that there are families right now that cannot afford the mortgage they do have, if they are so lucky to have a home, and also that those who are renting are finding that rents have doubled. We are hearing, across all of our communities, that homelessness has doubled. I met with the police chief and the mayor from my city last week, and we talked about detox centres. It is not only a housing crisis that has put people on the street; it is also a major drug, mental health and addictions crisis that is putting people into precarious situations. Oftentimes things are out of control and they cannot handle it. We had 66 overdoses in one week in Belleville, Ontario. It is just out of hand.

Housing should be announced as a crisis in this country. At the end of the day, after four years of talking, and after eight years, housing is in such dire straits. Of course, we look to competition to be the answer for that. Every single government has brought that forward and talked about competition. However, it has really been just drip, drip, drip. There has been one little policy or one little change, but no major competition. For the most part, it would bring in consumer-led banking, which would mean that many companies, fintech companies, could provide different options for consumers. The second part of that would be to ensure that we really look at stopping major bad deals that have happened under the existing Competition Act.

The speed of competition is really bad right now. There are major oligopolies in the banking sector. Six companies have 93% of all of the banking and 87% of all of the mortgages in Canada. The HSBC rates right now are 81 basis points lower than the RBC rates. This morning, HSBC is at 6.14% for a five-year variable mortgage rate, versus RBC at 6.95%. We can see what that means for competition.

The Competition Bureau is really a policing agency that is not supposed to prosecute but is supposed to look at competition in terms of a law enforcement society. We have all watched Law and Order. I don't remember their names, but the two detectives are supposed to bring the culprits in, and then, of course, there is the judicial system to tackle that.

The speed for competition law is about 100 kilometres an hour, when competition in housing should be a school zone; the speed should be 15 to 20 kilometres an hour so we look at slowing things down, blocking mergers such as HSBC's being bought by RBC, which would become the biggest bank in Canada by buying the seventh-biggest bank.

My bill, the consumer-led banking bill, if it were to push the government to bring legislation to the House, would ensure that we change one thing in the Banking Act: to ensure that people's personal data, which should be theirs, could be shared, with their consent, with other banking institutions. Doing so would create real, meaningful competition in the banking sector.

That is exactly what we are looking at with Bill C-27. Bill C-27 is about protecting data. It is looking at personal data for Canadians. I have spoken extensively about that in the House, about how our children's data is not protected right now. All of our children, at one point, have an iPad or an Amazon firestick, or they are on personal phones. Right now, data protection is so bad in Canada that all of that data can be scraped, and it is owned by companies, not by the children. It is sold to other companies.

Of course, we have not talked about the Privacy Act in Canada's not having been updated since 1987, way before the iPod. It was way before the time when we had technology and the Internet, as explosive as it is, which puts our children's data at risk.

However, the government, in its speed, in not adhering to speed signs, has sometimes been talking and making announcements as quickly as it can, and certainly not bringing action forward as quickly as it can. It has taken a year for the government to put Bill C-27, after its introduction in the House, into committee where it is now. The biggest problem with the legislation and the out-of-control speed of the government on announcements and on talking, not speed of action, was that the Liberals combined an AI bill with Bill C-27. The minister at the time said that this was because it was what the Liberals needed to do and that we would be the first jurisdiction across the world to do it. However, they were so speedy in announcing that they were doing it instead of doing it. They did not even do public consultation. We had no chance for public consultation when the AIDA was thrown into the act as the third section of Bill C-27.

So far, we have had about nine or 10 committee meetings about Bill C-27. Every witness so far has basically said that the AIDA, the third section of the act, is terrible and it is weak. The bill would not do the things we need to do, because we did not have public consultation and did not look really prudently at legislation that should have had public consultation and public input that would have listened to the industry.

AI in Canada is pretty scary because it is evolving quicker than we can look at it. It is not scary enough to say that we need to put in placeholder legislation and do something that is above that and different. No, it is scary enough that we have to do it right, which means that we slow it down. Just through testimony so far and because of the importance of the issue and how bad AIDA is, combined with the bill, we see that it will delay the better part of the bill, the first two parts of Bill C-27. The first two parts deal with updating privacy and the digital charter, but also with the tribunal.

The tribunal, which is still up for discussion, is taking from the Competition Act a process by which, if a privacy commissioner made a ruling or recommendation against an individual or against a corporation, at the end of the day, that tribunal would allow the option for an individual to have a second reading. The problem is that the tribunal in the Competition Act is not all that great either, which we saw with the Rogers and Shaw merger. The Competition Tribunal was utilized to review a merger of Rogers and Shaw, which was rejected by the Competition Bureau. The make-up of the Competition Tribunal is supposed to be three experts in privacy law, only three, so there is a lot of debate on that.

The first two parts of the bill are so complex. The third part throws the whole bill into a spin. The recommendation we are making is one we have made before. However, after hearing testimony in committee, we have recommended to separate the third part of the bill, which really needs to be scrapped because it is so weak. The recommendation about the bill would be to make it a separate vote. Probably the biggest argument for this is that it could save the first two parts of the bill, because we do need to update privacy legislation.

With respect to the most important part, which is owning one's data, I am going to go back to why that is so important with competition in banking. Right now, the only way to get people's credit-card and banking-statement data, which is theirs, is a method called “screen scraping”, which means that people give their safe word to another institution so they can go into their bank account and see their information. This is wrong. The U.K. and Australia have outlawed that because it is absolutely wrong, but it is a practice we allow in Canada. Consumer-led banking would ensure that people own their data, and, on their consent, they move that data to new competitors. New competitors could then bank them and provide better service, lower cost and more competition in Canada.

We have to separate the third part of the bill. AI is extremely scary. It is extremely important. I know that the next speaker is going to speak very profoundly on that. She is an expert on it.

[Committees of the House, November 30th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I think the Conservatives and the NDP, surprisingly, agree that competition is broken in Canada. We certainly, at the finance committee, agreed that the HSBC-RBC merger is a product of that broken system. There are broken laws that we have to fix. Everyone has brought new laws in.

The biggest thing that would change banking in Canada would be consumer-led banking or open banking. Does the member agree with the bill I have brought forward, that this party has brought forward, which would push the government to bring competition to Canada? That means consumer-led banking, with many different fintechs, would compete and lower the price of banking for Canadians.