Competing ideas: Canada's competition reform conversation

Bednar, Vass; Bester, Keldon Working Paper Competing ideas: Canada's competition reform conversation CIGI Papers, No. 293 Provided in Cooperation with: Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Waterloo, Ontario Suggested Citation: Bednar, Vass; Bester, Keldon (2024) : Competing ideas: Canada's competition reform conversation, CIGI Papers, No. 293, Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Waterloo (Ontario) This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/299990 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ CIGI Papers No. 293 — April 2024 Competing Ideas Canada’s Competition Reform Conversation Vass Bednar and Keldon Bester CIGI Papers No. 293 — April 2024 Competing Ideas: Canada’s Competition Reform Conversation Vass Bednar and Keldon Bester About CIGI The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) is an independent, non-partisan think tank whose peer-reviewed research and trusted analysis influence policy makers to innovate. Our global network of multidisciplinary researchers and strategic partnerships provide policy solutions for the digital era with one goal: to improve people’s lives everywhere. Headquartered in Waterloo, Canada, CIGI has received support from the Government of Canada, the Government of Ontario and founder Jim Balsillie. À propos du CIGI Le Centre pour l’innovation dans la gouvernance internationale (CIGI) est un groupe de réflexion indépendant et non partisan dont les recherches évaluées par des pairs et les analyses fiables incitent les décideurs à innover. Grâce à son réseau mondial de chercheurs pluridisciplinaires et de partenariats stratégiques, le CIGI offre des solutions politiques adaptées à l’ère numérique dans le seul but d’améliorer la vie des gens du monde entier. Le CIGI, dont le siège se trouve à Waterloo, au Canada, bénéficie du soutien du gouvernement du Canada, du gouvernement de l’Ontario et de son fondateur, Jim Balsillie. Credits Managing Director of Digital Economy (until February 2024) Robert Fay Director, Program Management Dianna English Program Manager Jenny Thiel Publications Editor Susan Bubak Graphic Designer Abhilasha Dewan Copyright © 2024 by the Centre for International Governance Innovation The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Centre for International Governance Innovation or its Board of Directors. For publications enquiries, please contact [email protected]. The text of this work is licensed under CC BY 4.0. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. For reuse or distribution, please include this copyright notice. This work may contain content (including but not limited to graphics, charts and photographs) used or reproduced under licence or with permission from third parties. Permission to reproduce this content must be obtained from third parties directly. For publication enquiries, please contact [email protected]. Centre for International Governance Innovation and CIGI are registered trademarks. 67 Erb Street West Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 6C2 www.cigionline.org Table of Contents vi About the Authors 1 Executive Summary 1 Introduction 2 Why Competition Matters 4 Previous Consultations on Canada’s Competition Policy 5 Who Participated and What Did They Say? 9 What Does This Mean for the Future of Competition in Canada? 12 Looking for Competition beyond the Competition Act 13 Conclusion 14 Works Cited vi CIGI Papers No. 293 — April 2024 • Vass Bednar and Keldon Bester About the Authors Vass Bednar is a CIGI senior fellow working at the intersection of technology and public policy as the executive director of the Master of Public Policy in Digital Society program at McMaster University, where she is an adjunct professor of political science. She writes a newsletter about start-ups and public policy called “regs to riches” and is a Public Policy Forum fellow. Vass is recognized as a creative, data-driven thinker and recently advised Ontario’s minister of labour, training and skills development on the province’s Workforce Recovery Advisory Committee (2021). She was previously chair of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Expert Panel on Youth Employment (2016–2017). Passionate about public dialogue, she was also the co-host of Detangled, a weekly pop culture and public policy radio show and podcast that ran from 2016 to 2018. Vass currently contributes to public dialogue as a panellist on CBC’s The Sunday Magazine show and on Newstalk 1010’s “Free for All” panel on Thursday mornings. She is a graduate of McMaster University’s Arts& Science Program (2008) and holds a master of public policy from the University of Toronto (2010). Keldon Bester is a CIGI fellow and the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, a think tank dedicated to addressing the harms of monopoly and building a more democratic economy. He is a leading voice in Canada’s competition policy conversation, and his writing and thinking have been featured in The Globe and Mail, National Post and Toronto Star. Keldon has worked as a special adviser at Canada’s Competition Bureau, as a fellow at the Open Markets Institute and as a consultant for organizations across the Canadian economy. He holds a master of public policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School. 1Competing Ideas: Canada’s Competition Reform Conversation Canadians deserve open and competitive markets, where firms are able to succeed or fail on their own merits. Unfortunately, at present, there are significant substantive challenges with the application of the abuse of dominance provisions under the Act, giving powerful firms undue ability to shape how competition evolves. —Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell (Competition Bureau 2023a) Executive Summary The Government of Canada has recently concluded a comprehensive review of and made initial updates to the core of the country’s competition law framework, the Competition Act, which was last reviewed in 2007. The act — just one component of Canada’s overall economic policy — along with economic trends and recent events have brought increased scrutiny of the state of competition in Canada and the laws designed to protect and promote it. Amid the rise of digital platforms and an explosion in the cost of living, competition has become a watchword for policy makers and everyday Canadians alike. But despite its relevance to daily life, the mechanics of competition law are often esoteric — the domain of a handful of legal and economic experts. This kind of asymmetry risks excluding constituents who should otherwise have the opportunity to contribute to this important public policy conversation. In an attempt to counter this tendency, this paper provides an overview of the motivation for a more effective and modern competition law, and briefly summarizes previous reform efforts to provide context for the quick policy action on the modernization of Canada’s competition law. Reviewing and highlighting a handful of stakeholders that have participated publicly to date, the paper considers how different contributors have shifted compared to past reform initiatives and what that means for the future of competition policy making in Canada. Introduction Competition has become a watchword for economic policy discussion in Canada. Amid a renewed focus on maintaining and improving affordability, the federal government is reconsidering the path taken since the 1986 introduction of the Competition Act, the component of Canada’s competition law policy framework applied generally across the economy. While sectors including air travel, banking and telecommunications have other legislative layers (or “levers”) that add additional policy elements governing their associated marketplaces, the Competition Act, enforced by the Competition Bureau, is at the heart of Canada’s approach to protecting and promoting competition. In the wake of similar competition reform exercises in peer jurisdictions, global macroeconomic shifts and high-profile glimpses into the limitations of the current framework, the current review of the Competition Act is as timely as it is intricate, and is at times convoluted — a reality that risks extinguishing the considerable public energy and interest in seeing this law updated. In the fall of 2022, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne launched a public consultation1 on the Competition Act centred on a substantial discussion paper, “The Future of Competition Policy in Canada” (Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada [ISED] 2022a). The publication canvassed the major areas of the existing legislation, posing probing questions throughout to stakeholders. While the document was an admirable attempt to translate the esoteric language of competition policy into everyday terms, the discussion paper presented a substantial hurdle to individuals and organizations that were not already well-versed on the law. The publication necessarily uses terms of art such as “anti-competitive,” “unilateral conduct” and “competitor collaborations” without offering further context or elaboration. Nonetheless, the themes outlined in the discussion paper point to the more accessible question being asked at the heart of the consultation: Do we have the right powers, rules and strategies to protect and promote competition in Canada? 1 Both authors have participated in current and previous consultations on Canada’s competition law and have advocated for change to existing legislation. 2CIGI Papers No. 293 — April 2024 • Vass Bednar and Keldon Bester The piece transposed that question onto the various dimensions of enforcement activity that the Competition Act enables Canada’s competition law enforcer, the Competition Bureau, to administer, including: → Are the constraints on mergers and acquisitions that allow corporations to acquire their competitors appropriately tuned to prevent the accumulation of power in a market? → Where that power has been obtained, through legitimate or illegitimate means, does Canada have the right authority to prevent corporations from using that power to dull the forces of competition? → Does the law adequately consider the impacts of corporate conduct on competition in the labour market — one in which nearly every Canadian participates? Although rooted in bureaucratic language, these questions go to the heart of the balances of power in the Canadian economy among consumers, producers and workers; between businesses that dominate markets and those that challenge them; and between established markets and those emerging around them. By opening the discussion to fundamental questions of the viability of Canada’s existing framework to protect competition, the government has signalled a willingness to change the direction of a core economic policy framework. This comprehensive review and open call for feedback has catalyzed responses from a spectrum of rich perspectives. Canadians are increasingly responding to the consequences of an economy characterized by a few major players in important markets, and an apparent slow drift toward even fewer in the future (Competition Bureau 2023b). Should competition evolve as a cornerstone of Canada’s economic plan for the coming decades, contributions to the policy process today will have had a hand in shaping that evolution. By rooting the discussion in the importance of competition to the growth and vitality of the Canadian economy, revisiting how engagement on the competition policy file has played out in the past and surveying how the current consultation compares to previous policy exercises, this paper seeks to highlight some of the core debates that are shaping what the future of competition in Canada may look like in the coming decades. Why Competition Matters Because of its integration into so many facets of economic life, competition has a multidimensional effect on the lives of Canadians. Although these effects are always present, trends and recent events have served to intensify the focus on the question of Canada’s ability to protect and adequately promote competition. Internationally, there has been a reckoning of sorts with the accumulated power of a handful of technology firms in digital markets, and the policy conditions under which that power was allowed to be attained. This policy energy coincided with a review and reassessment of the overall state of competition in major economies, led by the United States, and made present in the lives of individuals following a tightening of macroeconomic conditions. Beginning with its multidimensional impact on Canadians, in the most familiar example, competition is a force that can increase choice and drive prices down for consumers. Although often framed by its relevance to pocketbooks, the nature of choice also speaks to the question of how well individuals and communities with specialized needs are served by the economy. But the consequences of competition (or lack thereof) extend well beyond the prices Canadians pay for goods and services. Competition in the labour market — the balance of power between employers and employees — sets the boundaries for wages and employment opportunities for workers across the country. Healthy labour competition means that workers capture more of the value they generate and raises the standards for the treatment of workers by providing exit options. Open and contestable markets — the foundation of competition — matter to entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes, but especially those striking out in the shadow of incumbents. By maintaining contestability, assumptions about the status quo in markets are challenged by newcomers. Accordingly, competition is also the process through which innovation and the cycle of markets generate new ideas, goods and services, and ways of conducting business. Although 9Competing Ideas: Canada’s Competition Reform Conversation together, the responses envision a larger role for the Competition Bureau and government, including even the active break-up of existing concentrated markets and the opening of markets previously perceived as being closed to foreign competition. What Does This Mean for the Future of Competition in Canada? This scope of potential legislative reform put forward in the most recent consultation is considerable. Multiple dimensions of the Competition Act are being reconsidered for revision, and placing each of these elements under the spotlight has surfaced a range of perspectives and objections that ISED continues to consider carefully. While the department has sought to shape the debate through their key consultation questions, there is an umbrella opportunity for other comments that many stakeholders have utilized to share additional positions that may not fit as a direct response to the core question set. This outlet created additional richness for policy makers to consider new, complementary ideas that are pro-competitive and could be addressed through the Competition Act or another, more appropriate policy lever. In this way, the reform process is still clarifying; by highlighting key elements of contention, the reform process can begin to address concerns more directly. That said, as acknowledged in the “What We Heard Report,” at the time of writing there are few areas of obvious consensus on the key questions that the ministry has posed. Where there is general consensus, it tends to be in relation to debates that have been long-ongoing in Canada — some carrying over from the 2008 Compete to Win report. While the consultation has not resolved all key questions, it has brought attention to them in a productive and transparent manner. By bringing a range of issues forward, especially in light of policy progress in peer jurisdictions, the consultation created the basis for the federal government to move forward on initial reform of the Competition Act. In the timescale of legislative change, the resulting action and its scale have been impressive. Before the end of 2023, the government had brought into force Competition Act reform with Bill C-56 and proposed further changes to come in 2024 with Bill C-59 (see Box 1). Stepping back from the details of C-56 and C-59 allows for an assessment of what the bills mean in the broader context of Canada’s evolving approach to competition law. One decision avoided to date is the question of what a new organizing principle will be for Canada’s approach to competition law. Given that C-56 repeals the efficiency defence for mergers, there has certainly been a shift in guiding vision, but also a missed opportunity to articulate a new vision for Canadian competition law. Canada’s competition law might be leaning toward a post-efficiency era, but the purpose clause of the Competition Act remains unchanged, still including efficiency as one of its goals. In this way, while supporters of the status quo will certainly not be pleased about the comprehensive reforms, they may have scored a macro victory in that the act has not made a wholesale break with the past. By leaving the purpose of the Competition Act unchanged, legislators leave the goals of the next era of the Competition Act open to either debate or retrenchment. While the guiding purpose of the legislation may remain the same, what has emerged is an articulation of those principles through a more assertive stance against the accumulation and exploitation of economic power. Both the tone of the consultation discussion paper and amendments to date signal an understanding that the current act has not gone far enough in this regard. Giving the bureau greater powers, expanding the range of conduct considered a violation of the act and removing provisions that traded off competition for other policy goals, reflect the temperature of the public conversation as represented by the government’s summary of the submissions of individual Canadians. Despite the overall structure and purpose of the Competition Act remaining in place, this more assertive stance represents another break from the same kind of thinking that led to the efficiency focus of Canada’s framework. What remains to be seen, of course, is whether enforcement, soon to be a decentralized account of C-59, lives up to this perceived break. That the framework remains largely intact answers the same question, albeit more targeted, whether the act can sufficiently address challenges raised by large technology firms that have spurred 10 CIGI Papers No. 293 — April 2024 • Vass Bednar and Keldon Bester Box 1: Initial Products of the Consultation (Bills C-56 and C-59) At time of writing, Bill C-56 had been passed into law and Bill C-59 is set to be debated by parliamentarians in early 2024. While the details of C-59 may change as a result of committee activity, its proposed form is worth considering ahead of potential amendments. Bill C-56: Also known as the Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, Bill C-56*1 was tabled September 21, 2023. Although the bill followed the government’s consultation and addressed some issues raised by it, the motivation of the bill is clear from its title. Responding to the costof-living issues faced by Canadians, C-56 was framed as the government’s first steps toward improving competition and affordability. In its original form, C-56 addressed two long-standing issues with the Competition Act and one more unique one. By removing the efficiencies defence and providing the Competition Bureau with the authority to compel information for market studies, C-56 brings Canada’s competition law in closer alignment with international peers. Given their long tenure in the competition policy debate, the issue of efficiencies and market studies was raised by a number of parties, with arguments concentrated within civil society groups and academia. In addition to addressing issues subject to years-long debate, C-56 also redrew the provisions against agreements that reduce competition to allow for enforcement against agreements between companies that are not competitors but reduce competition, nonetheless. Although there were recommendations raised to strengthen the approach against anti-competitive agreements in general, notably by the Competition Bureau, the focus on the relationship between competitors was likely drawn from popular news coverage of the impact of these agreements on competition in the grocery sector in a highly localized context. A reflection of the cross-party support for stronger competition law in Canada, C-56 was strengthened materially by amendments from the other three major federal parties as it progressed through the Standing Committee on Finance. While the most material amendments, expanding the scope and penalties for abuse of dominance, originated from the New Democratic Party, the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois included important amendments to remove shadow efficiency defences in other areas of the law and include language to capture excessive pricing as an abuse of dominance. Even while operating outside of the government’s consultation process, opposition parties clearly drew from the content of the consultation to inform their amendments. In particular, the broadening of the abuse of dominance provisions drew on alignment between the Competition Bureau and civil society groups on the limitation of the existing law. Bill C-59: While Bill C-56 was targeted in its amendments to the Competition Act, Bill C-59 takes a more comprehensive approach, touching almost every area of competition law enforcement while maintaining the structure of the existing framework. As part of an omnibus bill to implement the 2023 Fall Economic Statement, the Competition Act components come alongside other indirect changes to the role of competition in Canada’s economic policy, including open banking and employee ownership. Possibly most consequential for the future of the development of Canada’s competition policy framework is the opening of access and inclusion of damages for private parties to bring their own cases under the Competition Act (often referred to as “private access rights”). In the United States, private parties play a major role in the development of competition law jurisprudence, a component that has been largely absent in the Canadian context. By decentralizing enforcement of the Competition Act, C-59 sets the stage for an increased pace of cases and richer body of case law going forward. Advocates for this kind of change through the consultation reflected segments * Bill C-56, An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act and the Competition Act, 1st Sess, 44th Parl, 2023, online: Parliament of Canada <www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-56/royal-assent>. 11Competing Ideas: Canada’s Competition Reform Conversation action by international peers. Respondents were divided on whether and how the act may better address such issues or whether net new “brightline” legislation should be introduced to directly address “big tech.” Here, those advocating for either the status quo or remedy via an enhanced competition law framework rather than targeted regulation were heard the clearest. So far at least, Canada is keeping the designation of certain behaviours as inherently problematic off the table, keeping in place an approach that prices case-by-case investigation and resolution. Should this approach not bear fruit, policy makers might begin to consider building out new frameworks rather than expanding the scope of existing ones as some international peers have done. Focusing on the institutions responsible for enforcing and adjudicating the Competition Act, the role of the Competition Bureau and the Competition Tribunal has largely been passed over in this current round of reforms. Submissions imagine a Competition Bureau with more independent decision-making power as in jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and the European Union, while others strenuously argued that these powers should remain the remit of the courts. So far, the decision-making power of the Competition Bureau and Competition Tribunal has been kept as is, but whether this remains the case as the private access regime brought in through C-59 takes shape remains to be seen. By decentralizing enforcement of the Competition Act, legislators may be setting the table for a future look at the institutions supporting the effective operation of this legal framework. Box 1 (continued): of the legal community, members of the business community and civil society organizations who noted the strain on the bureau’s ability to administer the act as the sole federal enforcer of the Competition Act. Companies bringing their own cases will have access to bolstered laws against agreements that harm competition. Lacking the ability to pursue past agreements and levy financial penalties, provisions against anti-competitive agreements that do not rise to the standard of criminal cartel enforcement went effectively unused by the Competition Bureau. While not included in the new private access regime, C-59 makes important changes to the merger enforcement framework, arguably the most prominent element of Canada’s competition law, especially in the wake of mergers such as Rogers-Shaw and RBC-HSBC Canada. In addition to increasing the scope for the Competition Bureau to intervene against harmful mergers, C-59 removes barriers for the bureau to consider structural factors such as market shares in competition analysis and make explicit the government’s desire for impacts on labour markets to be taken into account when assessing mergers. Here, the incorporation of labour as a factor represents the recognition of the contribution of civil society organizations, particularly organized labour, and the extension of the policy discourse on labour and competition that spurred the 2022 amendments. Reflecting the ongoing discussion on the intersection between competition law and environmental policy goals, C-59 also creates a process for the Competition Bureau to authorize agreements between competitors with an environmental purpose, so long as they are judged not to reduce competition. Present in select submissions from the legal community and civil society, the inclusion of environmental authorizations is an example of the government’s reform efforts reflecting not just the content of the consultation but also wider policy conversations occurring outside of it. 12 CIGI Papers No. 293 — April 2024 • Vass Bednar and Keldon Bester Looking for Competition beyond the Competition Act Although this discussion has mimicked the focus of the Future of Competition Policy in Canada consultation by prioritizing analysis of the Competition Act, a number of policy levers have the potential to affect the path of competition in Canada. In a recent speech, Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell (2023) pointed to a “whole-of-government approach” to competition in Canada. The bureau has long called for the inclusion of competition assessments in policy decisions as a mechanism to promote the consideration of whether and how a decision will influence whether and how a policy impacts competition (Competition Bureau Canada 2020b). Legislative modifications to one piece of legislation alone may not have restorative effects in the immediate term. For this reason, proponents for this whole-of-government approach echo US President Joe Biden’s historic Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, which contains 72 different actions related to competition across a range of federal agencies (The White House 2021). It seems likely that the future of competition policy in Canada will be more comprehensive, extending beyond the act to complementary activities and interventions in different ministries and across orders of government. To that end, Canada already has a suite of promising activities that could serve as the foundation for such an approach. For instance, two significant bills from Heritage Canada seek to address the market power of major technology companies and its consequences for Canadian cultural and media markets: Bill C-18 (the Online News Act) and Bill C-11 (the Online Streaming Act). The bureau already has 24 memoranda of understanding with domestic partners that have a shared interest in promoting competition and fair marketplaces, and 16 with other jurisdictions, laying the groundwork for ongoing cross-sectoral and international collaboration. Also empowering the bureau to collaborate more effectively is the Canadian Digital Regulators Forum, linking the bureau with the Privacy Commissioner and the head of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, each with a hand in guiding the future of digital markets. Canada is also midway through legislative efforts related to open banking and payment modernization, which will improve consumer choice and facilitate new entrants in the banking sector. But the federal government is not alone in its push for fostering greater competition in Canada. The province of Ontario has shown leadership on relevant competition issues, banning noncompetes in labour agreements in the summer of 2022 and more recently tackling subscription traps by giving consumers the right to rescind a contract for one year after entering it. The province of Quebec has also put forward legislation supporting the right to report, reducing the hold that technology companies have over customer purchases and opening up opportunities for independent service providers (Serebrin 2023). Occurring outside the legislature, there are also a number of class action lawsuits stemming from the revelation of alleged price-fixing activity in the grocery space, with meat packers in Quebec a target apparently beyond the scope of the bureau’s own investigation. In a similar vein, the North American MyMerch campaign is gaining traction in Canada to rebalance the relationship between musicians and the consolidated venues they rely on to access audiences.7 Although these efforts are not nearly as coordinated as Biden’s executive order on competition, they are a snapshot of efforts in Canada beyond the Competition Act to create more competitive and diverse markets across the country. Conclusion Amid a historic inflationary period that has catalyzed a cost-of-living crisis, the potential of competition law amendments that can better govern firm behaviour is garnering considerable and consistent attention from federal political parties. But beyond emergent economic issues, the potential of a greater focus on competition speaks to longer-running issues in the Canadian economy. Today, Canada ranks seventeenth among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development regarding the percentage of GDP spent on research and 7 See https://weareumaw.org/news/mymerch-campaign-launch. 13Competing Ideas: Canada’s Competition Reform Conversation development (R&D), one indicator of investment in innovation, and among the lowest of G7 peers.8 Further, Canadian firms have historically underinvested in R&D (Parkinson 2023). If it is the case that a latent lack of competition means firms are not compelled to take on the hard work of actually innovating, modernizing Canada’s competition law — and a greater focus on competition in general — could be an important part of solving Canada’s productivity “puzzle.” Previous consultations on competition in Canada correctly understood that there is more to fostering and protecting competition than simply updating the Competition Act, as other policy decisions can have significant implications for markets. But as the sole piece of purely competition-focused legislation, the act is a keystone: important not only as the guardrails for fair commerce in Canada but also a signal of the role of competition in the economy. Who shapes that law and how they shape it has implications for the future structure of markets and how they generate and distribute the spoils of the rivalry that forms the foundation of Canada’s economy. It is clear that the consultation on the Future of Competition in Canada was unable to be a consensus-building exercise across stakeholders. Submissions to the consultation painted a diverse but effectively bifurcated path. One side argues for marginal — if any — amendment to the current approach, while those in favour of reform offer an array of future directions for the legislation to take. However, recent years have shown that there is not one single opportunity to chart the course of Canada’s competition law. It may be that reshaping the Competition Act is an iterative activity for years to come, as a new logic that can underpin our legislative approach emerges and is used to refine Canada’s economic policy. As the outcomes of the consultation exercise continue to take shape, it is important to recognize the important work Canada has undertaken by subjecting a key piece of economic policy to public scrutiny and debate. Attracting disparate voices from industry, government, civil society and academia, the government has faced the task of translating those voices into the future of competition in Canada. Nearly four decades after its last major reform, the future development path of 8 See https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm. the Competition Act and competition law in Canada may instead be one of ongoing and iterative reform. 14 CIGI Papers No. 293 — April 2024 • Vass Bednar and Keldon Bester Works Cited Akcigit, Ufuk, Wenjie Chen, Federico J. Díez, Romain Duval, Philipp Engler, Jiayue Fan, Chiara Maggi et al. 2021. “Rising Corporate Market Power: Emerging Policy Issues.” IMF Staff Discussion Note. March. www.imf.org/en/Publications/ Staff-Discussion-Notes/Issues/2021/03/10/RisingCorporate-Market-Power-Emerging-Policy-Issues-48619. 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