Industry committee  I think that's where we start getting at the intersections between competition law and privacy and data management. We see this happening in an analog context. I'm sorry to give an American example, but Target also essentially rips off successful brands, copycats them, puts them under their private label and forces those firms out of their ecosystem and ends their contracts with them.

Industry committee  Of course. We're keeping our eyes on the time as well. This is why we're so excited about the potential to more comprehensively review the Competition Act. Again, there are pro-competitive policies that can take place outside of the act. Earlier this week you heard from one of our colleagues, Robin Shaban.

Industry committee  Okay.

Industry committee  Thank you for the question. Denise, I'll turn it to you in a second. I think a lot of what you've heard are people describing the problems of private gatekeepers. When you heard earlier this week from CFIB about red tape, there was a little ambiguity there. We're putting forward that some of that red tape is imposed by large private companies.

Industry committee  Thank you so much. My name is Vass Bednar. I'm the executive director of McMaster University's M.P.P. in digital society program, where I'm also an adjunct professor of political science. I'm also a Public Policy Forum fellow and a senior fellow at CIGI. I write the newsletter “Regs to Riches”.

Industry committee  As the committee undertakes this study, we would encourage you to focus on the underappreciated or less appreciated challenges that independent businesses are facing in today's markets, particularly in digital platform-based markets. Of late, I've taken a consumer-centric approach to my own research and advocacy.

Industry committee  Platforms or online marketplaces such as Amazon also compete directly with their third party sellers. They've referred to them as “internal competitors” in corporate documents. Regulators and decision-makers should be concerned then, perhaps, that Amazon's IP Accelerator, which launched in 2019 and came to Canada last year in 2021, is now here.

Industry committee  I do think we should. That case is interesting when you think about the very high burden of proof that we have under the Competition Act for abusive dominance. A challenge in our digital age is establishing that proof. What was interesting about those conversations, from what I read about them in the newspaper and online, is the use of telephones to just have conversations—just pick up a phone.

Industry committee  Yes. I think preventing us from going back could hurt us, as we're seeing in the United States taking a second look at a merger with Facebook. However, back to the point about being anticipatory, we're also seeing some evidence from other competition authorities.... The Google-Fitbit merger is an interesting case of just looking ahead to what the implications are of both those companies having the same data.

Industry committee  Yes. We're thinking about the threshold. Again, how has the digital economy changed and challenged what we think about when it comes to evaluating those mergers? It's specifically from a start-up perspective as well, the ability of larger incumbents to snatch up smaller companies that could be growing or have information that they need.

Industry committee  I absolutely see it as a challenge. It's not just information to acquire competitors. It's also to develop products, to set prices and to understand audiences to advertise to, right? Companies don't just compete on price anymore. They also compete on privacy, on data. I wonder and sometimes worry that....

Industry committee  Yes, I would agree with that characterization. I would also offer that it has to operate that way because (a), we're not empowering our bureau and (b), we're not really being thoughtful about the legislation that governs the competition environment and what the bureau can do, such as what it can elevate in terms of cause of concern and what enforcement power and policy expertise it can call its own.

Industry committee  Sure. It's a common thread. I also lamented that lack of scholarship, but of course, there is scholarship, and that's a common criticism of how we've structured our Competition Bureau. Other competition authorities have more independence. They have, of course, more power and more funding, but they also almost have a ministerial-like authority to pursue reviews, to publish papers.

Industry committee  I think so. This is something I'm learning more about. My appreciation and understanding of it is not sophisticated, but I think you're quite savvy to link that up. Such a conversation should be part and parcel of moving ahead with reviewing the Competition Act.

Industry committee  Yes, like thinking of the legislation as a time machine.... Right now, the Competition Bureau has this ability to issue something called an “advance ruling certificate”. It's an ARC for mergers. This commits the bureau to never reviewing a merger again after it's already been reviewed, so we could consider whether that's truly useful and helps us.