Industry committee  A good example here is the question of competitors. Right now, the legislation as it is currently enforced requires that price-fixing be among competitors. That is, per se, a leap. The legislation as proposed includes any employers, not necessarily competitors. This could have a

Industry committee  Thank you very much. I have the great pleasure of working with the C.D. Howe Institute's competition policy council, which is comprised of top-ranked competition law academics and practitioners. Elisa Kearney, whom you will be hearing from later today in her role at the CBA, is

Industry committee  Is that any better?

Industry committee  Sure. I'm sorry about that. With such large potential penalties, there's a risk of over-deterrence, and firms may shy away from practices that may be beneficial for Canadians. These potential fines raise reputational risks for Canada as not being supportive of foreign investment

Finance committee  Very much so, and this actually goes, again, to the question on processes, and what we're looking for in terms of outcomes. The spending review has to be very clear about the outcome that you're looking for, and this is going to be an issue in a number of different areas. Let m

Finance committee  Absolutely. The problems with the BIA are reminiscent of a very similar process concern that accompanied the legislative changes to the Competition Act the last time we did this, in 2009, which was again via the budget process. For example, some of the things we're seeing now

Finance committee  For sure. Let's talk about wage-fixing. There are very sound legal and economic reasons to forbid wage-fixing and no-poach agreements. Price-fixing, which has a criminal penalty with it, and wage-fixing, are very economically similar, but the language of the new amendment is ov

Finance committee  I would leave you with a suggestion for one of two paths for the committee. One is carving division 15 out of the legislation. I recognize that, in a budget bill, those kinds of asks are pretty big. However, we've heard a number of people talk about that need for other provisio

Finance committee  This is a perennial problem in any kind of government service, where you're asking yourself, “What does this bureaucrat do in terms of taking an idea and turning it into output?” but that's true of everyone. How do you measure this in the health sector, for example? It's very dif

Finance committee  For sure. One of the things that I think about goes back to the words of Don Drummond, one of our fellows at the C.D. Howe and a former official in the government. A common reaction to the 2022 federal budget is that it's “not as bad as expected”, but what kind of an evaluation i

Finance committee  I would start from your first point, which is programs that don't have a commensurate revenue plan to pay for them. Programs under new government spending do not pay for themselves. Taxpayers must pay for the programs that we want, whether it's pharmacare, dental care or child ca

Finance committee  Thank you very much for the question. The changes proposed in the BIA result in corporations now facing administrative monetary penalties, or AMPs, of up to 3% of annual worldwide gross revenues. Let me talk a little bit about the legal process first. If an AMP is penal in natur

Finance committee  I would add that we have to think about this through the lens of provinces as well. If you look at the overall state of Canada's fiscal outlook, we're looking at very large health care expenses in the future and an echo boom of education payments and paying for students in school

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Bill. The C.D. Howe Institute's competition policy council, which is comprised of top-ranked competition law academics and practitioners, noted support for the government's intention articulated in budget 2022 to consult broadly on the role and functioning o