Ottawa will aggressively boost competition between companies in an attempt to relieve the cost of living, the Minister of Industry, Mélanie Joly on Wednesday, when the annual summit of the Competition Office in Ottawa opened.
In his speech, Joly gave an emphatic support of greater market competition in Canada.
“Let me be clear. This government will be aggressive in the competition,” he said.
Joly argued that expanding competition in Canadian industries such as Telecom would give consumers more options and offer a path to the lowest prices.
The speakers at the competition summit also launched improvements to competitive forces and cut the bureaucracy in Canada as a solution to mark productivity.
The Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell said in his speech that promoting competition within the country will help Canadian companies worldwide as US tariffs and changing commercial flows threaten long -standing supply chains.
“The protection of national competition companies does not make them strong. It makes them complacent,” said Boswell. “If we want them to compete worldwide, they must face competition at home.”
The competition office acts as a control agency for competitive dynamics in Canada and has examined the concentration in the edible and airline sectors in recent years.
Boswell said the last study revealed that adding a new carrier to an existing route can reduce air rates between two cities by an average of nine percent.
“Competition is one of the most effective tools that we can take to reduce prices and improve products and services,” he said.
But adding new competitors to concentrated Canadian industries has proven difficult.
Boswell said that bureaucracy and prohibitive starting costs prevented entrepreneurs from starting the types of new companies that provide market innovation and exert pressure on the owners.
Statistics Canada said in an February report that the federal regulation level increased by 37 percent between 2006 and 2021.
As a result, said Statscan, the real growth of the gross domestic product was 1.7 lower percentage points during that decade and a half, while business investment was approximately nine percent lower.
License costs, property limits and excessive rates are common irritating that maintain the low business creation rate in Canada, Boswell said.
“These barriers not only slow down businessmen, but block them,” he said.
Boswell said that smart regulation should encourage new participants to the market, not to strengthen and protect established players.
The commissioner also spoke on Wednesday with the senior vice governor of the Bank of Canada, Carolyn Rogers, who the alarm of weak productivity rates in a speech last year.
Increasing productivity means increasing how much a business or worker can produce in a given period, generally giving them better tools to do the job. Rogers said Wednesday that it is essential for the growth of Canada’s economy without increasing prices.
The competition “greases the wheels” of productivity by pushing companies to be better and invest in their operations, he said.
Rogers also warned about the need for balance in any thrust to cut the bureaucracy. She said that security and innovation regulation can be compensation for policy formulators to consider.
Going to the budget of the liberals on November 4, Prime Minister Mark Carney has promoted plans to improve productivity by increasing federal infrastructure spending and attracting external investments.
In question this week: what the first projects in the approval signal of the approval of Prime Minister Mark Carney on the government’s leadership. The parliamentarians return to Parliament on Monday, but have the dynamics change? And conservatives point to the temporary program of foreign workers.
The recently created important project office, for example, has a mandate to shorten the deadlines for regulatory approvals in large infrastructure projects up to a maximum of two years.
The Federal Conservative Party has pressed for a long time to cut the bureaucracy to accelerate the construction of housing and that the government leaves the path of companies that wish to invest in Canada.
The Federal Secretariat of the Board of the Treasury launched a red ribbon review in July that returned last month with almost 500 suggestions to rationalize the regulations.
Telecom at the Care Center
Some of Ottawa’s recent efforts to improve competition in Canada revolve around the telecommunications sector.
Joly cited on Wednesday his August decision to maintain a regulatory decision that allows large telecommunications companies to offer services behind the networks of their rivals as an example of a measure that increases competitive forces in the sector.
“The ruling allows Internet suppliers to compete today throughout the country. This means more option, lower prices and better service offers for Canadians everywhere,” said Joly.
In June, CRTC issued its final decision on that controversial issue, which faced Téus against the Bell and Rogers rivals, and many smaller suppliers who opposed the framework.
Bell argued against politics, saying that he discourages the main suppliers to invest in their own infrastructure. Some independent operators suggested that it would make it difficult to compete against larger players.
Téus defended politics as a way to boost competition in the regions where it does not have its own network infrastructure, and argued that it would cause telecommunications services to be more affordable.
The previous liberal government gave the competition office new powers to impose stronger sanctions, analyze more closely the proposed mergers and force the financial documents of the subjects of their market investigations.
Last month, the office launched a barriers market for small and medium enterprises that seek access to financing in a loan industry dominated by the large banks of Canada.
Joly offered that study as an example of efforts that will help Canadian companies grow and compete.
“My message is clear today: Canada is open for business, but we hope companies compete fairly,” he said.
