Industry committee  I would be careful with such comparisons. We made a few comparisons. It is difficult to make them, especially because we are dealing with a set of services. But if we compare public statistics, you are surely right about the comparison with the United States, but not with regard

Industry committee  Of course, but if we want to study the market dynamics, we cannot necessarily compare ourselves to the United States, because service providers in Canada are different, they are not the same.

Industry committee  The 25% is not guaranteed. There are industries—

Industry committee  As far as we are concerned, even at 25%, some industries said that it was not enough, nor even 30% or 40%. This is why the market share is not always a solution—

Industry committee  In our opinion, we should proceed as quickly as possible. This is why we proposed a test based on the elements of competition, namely the costs for the company, the rivalry on the market, as these are also reasonable factors for determining the level of competition in a market.

Industry committee  I suppose that that would be collusion, and we certainly do have tools for investigating such things.

Industry committee  But you are speaking of two competitors who turn into partners—

Industry committee  Not anywhere else. We have done—

Industry committee  We came up the middle on that, in a sense. I think I've said several times that the market share tests are useful, but they don't determine the matter in all cases. We don't like market share; we wouldn't agree with the 25% test. What we're looking at instead is whether there is

Industry committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for inviting us here today to participate in your study into gasoline prices and refining margins. As you mentioned, Mr. Chair, I'm accompanied today by Richard Taylor, who's deputy commissioner for the civil matter

Industry committee  I think it's important, and I'm going to try not to use up your six minutes, although I would like to provide a fairly comprehensive answer to this question, because it does come up fairly frequently, and I'd like to try to be as clear as I can about the types of behaviour that w

Industry committee  For sure—it's a very interesting question. Two weeks ago I was at the meeting of the International Competition Network, which is the group that represents 100 antitrust agencies around the world, and I'm now the chair of the steering group. We have lots of chances to get togethe

Industry committee  To begin with, you talked about a reasonable profit. As I explained, it is not up to us to set prices or determine what constitutes a reasonable profit. We can do this type of analysis to see whether or not there is a reason for suspecting anti-competitive behaviour. Just because

Industry committee  We analyze whether or not the purpose of the concentration is to obtain dominance and whether or not competition in the market has declined. We have noted that the number of refineries has decreased, but that does not mean that we are finished with companies that may, according t

Industry committee  Creating such a bureau would enable us to study the market, because the legislation has other gaps, as mentioned in the current committee's reports. We could do market studies, especially in the oil industry, where there is a great deal of public information, like the studies tha