Canadian Heritage committee  Good afternoon, Madam Chair. As indicated, my name is Mark Schaan, and I serve as director general of the marketplace framework policy branch in the strategic policy sector of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. While our sector broadly includes such policy areas as in

Canadian Heritage committee  Maybe I can speak to that, just from the policy perspective. Following the “Compete to Win” Red Wilson panel, substantive changes were made to the Competition Act in 2009. Then there's actually a bill currently before the House, Bill C-25, that makes a small amendment to the act

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. The important thing about the act, though, is it is an act of general purpose, and it's not sector-specific. It sets out general principles that allow us to be able to continue to work on things like deceptive marketing, collusion, and then mergers and other transactions. Es

Canadian Heritage committee  In terms of the regulation of advertising, as a commercial activity it would be regulated in the various forms that we regulate any commercial activity. If you are found to be anti-competitive or...a significant lessening of competition, you would fall under the guise of the Comp

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, and that advertising is regulated insofar as any advertising is regulated. If it makes a false claim, it would fall under the guise of the Competition Act. This is more in the zone of the Public Policy Forum study that we have been working on. The PPF has encountered a numb

Canadian Heritage committee  My particular shop has roughly 35 people. We look at acts in general. All of my statutes are laws of general purpose. I have a team related to copyright and trademarks. I have a team related to patents. I have a team related to competition insolvency and competition. I don't have

Canadian Heritage committee  Just to add to that, within each one of the functionings of our act, we have stakeholder communities dedicated to understanding the particular need. In copyright, a huge chunk of my stakeholders are publishers and content creators, and I spend a lot of time with them. These are t

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. That contract is with the Public Policy Forum. That organization established the contract. Over the course of the summer, they held eight or 10 round tables in Halifax, Toronto, Saskatoon, and Vancouver. In the course of those, they were dedicated to the question of the rol

Canadian Heritage committee  They are not. They are separate. There are a number of intervening pieces. My minister ran the innovation agenda consultations over the course of the spring, summer, and early fall, which had sector-specific as well as geographic-specific—

Canadian Heritage committee  No. We have a strategic relationship in terms of our continued discussions with our colleagues at the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, my colleagues in the industry sector do have a sector that looks at the retail component. They look at retail across a whole series of sectors, including the e-commerce space, and then they liaise with folks like me in terms of the linkage between that e-commerce activity fr

Canadian Heritage committee  I'd say yes and no. As a sector, we look at industrial activity in a number of different ways. Our colleagues at—

Canadian Heritage committee  We do have folks who look at retail—

Canadian Heritage committee  —but at media it would be enveloped because media, as a sector, would be shared with the Department of Canadian Heritage and so—

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll just add that for new entities, organizations that wouldn't be as a function of a merger or an acquisition, one of the drives towards innovation within Innovation, Science and Economic Development is to facilitate ease of doing business. That is one of the reasons why incorp