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Results: 1 - 9 of 9
View Sébastien Lemire Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I will continue with Mr. Winseck and Mr. Klass, from the Canadian Media Concentration Research Project.
Tax evasion heavily favours major U.S. digital media such as Netflix, Disney, Facebook and other web giants, to the detriment of the prosperity of Quebec and Canadian media. This is a serious problem for the present and the future of Quebec's and Canada's media ecosystems. To address this, Australia adopted a code of conduct.
What measures do you think the federal government and the Government of Quebec should consider to ensure that Quebec's and Canada's media companies would decreasingly suffer from the negative effects of unfair competition from American big tech companies?
Dwayne Winseck
View Dwayne Winseck Profile
Dwayne Winseck
2021-04-15 12:58
There seem to be a couple of questions there.
Regarding the idea of the tax question, I think that's pretty low-hanging fruit, and we can standardize the HST and GST across the like services. I think we're waiting on a developments agreement at the OECD on a digital services tax that would harmonize that across the OECD countries. I think that's fine.
I think once we get into the other questions about how we regulate Netflix, for example, or Facebook and Google, is the Australian model a good one, for example? I think there is much of interest in that model: the recognition of these companies' dominant market power; the idea that Google controls vertically integrated...with its own online ad exchange and all the data around which that ad exchange works, and that we need to open up the kimono to allow regulators and others to access that data to see how the algorithm works. I think these are good things.
The idea, though, that somehow this just ends up with transferring buckets of cash from the so-called web giants to domestic players, I think, is a real Achilles heel here that we need to avoid. We need to deal with the market power, black box technologies, and it cannot just go to delivering buckets of cash from foreign players to domestic ones.
Vass Bednar
View Vass Bednar Profile
Vass Bednar
2021-04-15 13:00
My big observation for the competition environment with telecommunications is just recognizing that we allow providers to compete on both the infrastructure and the services, and this kind of structural function contributes to a lot of the challenges that have been documented. I hope that's helpful.
View Earl Dreeshen Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I know that in recent years, the European Commission has been much more active in enforcing competition rules on big tech companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook. Does the Competition Bureau have enough resources and legal powers to effectively enforce competition rules against big tech companies? More importantly, does the Competition Act provide high enough penalties to discourage big tech companies from engaging in anti-competitive practices?
Matthew Boswell
View Matthew Boswell Profile
Matthew Boswell
2020-12-03 11:39
In terms of resources, the bureau strives every day to get the absolute most out of the resources we have, to be as efficient and effective as possible, always looking at our processes and how we can do better, and what tools we could use to do better.
That said, I've spoken publicly multiple times about some of the challenges the bureau faces with respect to administering and enforcing the Competition Act in the digital economy. We've had a veritable explosion of data in the world and, of course, law enforcement agencies have to deal with the data we receive on cases. The amount of data we've received has gone up six times. The cost of cases has increased dramatically.
Our budget has been about the same for 10 years, so in real dollars, it's down about 10%, and we have fewer resources now than we did 15 years ago in terms of people working on files. Outsiders have called on the bureau to get more resources, including the C.D. Howe Institute as well as the Global Competition Review in its annual review of competition enforcement agencies around the world.
We're doing the best work we can in the public interest to protect Canadians. We've brought cases. We've investigated Google. We brought a case against Amazon in 2017 with respect to some of the pricing practices. We obviously resolved the matter with Facebook earlier this year in terms of privacy representation. As some members of the committee may know, we have an active investigation into Amazon.
The good people at the bureau get up every morning and our mission is to serve the public interest, to do as much as we can to enforce and administer the law and to promote competition in Canada.
View James Cumming Profile
CPC (AB)
That's great.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.
I want to start off with a discussion around the concentration that's happening with the large, big tech players. You mentioned earlier that you've had a couple of rulings related to Facebook and Amazon, but given the nature of their business and the direction in which it's going, how concerned are you about the market concentration they will have as major players in Canada? What tools do you have in your tool chest to be able to hold them accountable for predatory practices and market dominance?
Matthew Boswell
View Matthew Boswell Profile
Matthew Boswell
2020-12-03 11:56
Madam Chair, I thank Mr. Cumming for that excellent question.
This is an issue that competition agencies around the world have been grappling with, how these digital platform markets can be, to a certain extent, winner-take-all markets where the competition is for the market, not in the market. The bureau has been very alive to these issues and working on these issues for several years.
In September 2019, we put out what we refer to as a digital enforcement call-out, where we had a white paper, an issues paper, that explained to the Canadian public the key competition issues in these digital markets, how they could tip to concentration of one or a small number of companies, and what type of anti-competitive practices to be on the lookout for in these markets.
That's similar to our call-out for information earlier this year about conduct in Amazon. That's obviously an ongoing investigation, so I can't get into the details.
These are serious issues that, as I said, our colleagues around the world are grappling with. There has been extensive work done in this area. The bureau is on it and is paying close attention. Where we find the evidence or where the evidence leads us to bring a case, we'll bring a case.
View James Cumming Profile
CPC (AB)
I'm finding this very informative. Thank you for being here today.
I want to come back to the discussion related to the dominant tech players, particularly the giants—we're seeing organizations like Amazon, particularly, coming into the market—and the use of data. I know you said you will be reviewing Bill C-11, but I wonder, with that kind of dominance and that control and use of data, if we should be concerned that there aren't enough teeth in your act or in Bill C-11 to deal with things like customer lists. This is stuff that's proprietary and that could really put at risk smaller Canadian companies, small businesses that are using what they think is a service provider but actually could quite likely be a competitor.
Matthew Boswell
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Matthew Boswell
2020-12-03 12:36
I'm not too familiar with the connection to Bill C-11 in that regard, but what I can tell you is that it's very clear, with these large platforms, that data is a huge factor in controlling the market. If you control the data and it's very difficult for entrants to come in and acquire the necessary data to have the scope and the scale to compete, those are very significant issues in terms of competitive intensity and new entrants coming into a market.
We're paying very close attention to the competition issues related to the control of data and the prevention of access to data, which is why I pointed out earlier that the data mobility provision in Bill C-11 is certainly interesting. It ties to something that the bureau has been talking about for some time, which is data portability. This ties into things like open banking, which could provide more competition in the Canadian marketplace.
I'm not sure I answered Mr. Cumming's question.
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