Honourable senators, this morning, the Competition Bureau released a review of various measures of competition and economic activity in Canada between 2000 and 2020. The bureau found that concentration rose in our most concentrated sectors because of consolidation and fewer firms entering those sectors. Consequently, our biggest firms are less and less challenged by competitors, resulting in increasing markups and profits.

Colleagues, the state of competition in Canada is threatening our prosperity, contributing to our rising cost of living and entrenching the dominance of incumbents. Weak competition laws have created oligopolies in banking, telecom, airlines, groceries and beyond. Many oligopolies have become so dominant that they have the luxury of serving the interests of their shareholders without having to first concern themselves with the interests of their customers.

Colleagues, you can never regulate a company into being customer-centric. Only competition makes that happen.

We’ve reached the point in Canada where our oligopolies are actually protected from competition because innovative new entrants can’t afford the cost of our country’s complex and cumbersome regulatory burden. It’s a sad irony that in many sectors our regulations, initially intended to protect citizens, now do a better job of protecting the interests of incumbent oligopolies.

Conversely, a lack of regulatory protections in the area of personal data privacy has increased the dominance of some of the largest companies, both domestic and foreign. Specifically, once we press “I accept,” our personal data is vacuumed out of the country by big tech or into the control of our oligopolies. To give you a sense of the scale, it is estimated that each Canadian produces an average of 1.7 megabytes of data per second, equivalent to about 850 pages of text.

All of this can change if Parliament begins to prioritize the passage of Bill C-27, the digital charter implementation act. The bill includes a data mobility right, enabling Canadians to securely move their data from those who currently control it to organizations that they trust will better serve their needs, tilting the currently uneven playing field away from oligopolies and big tech toward Canadian consumers.

But implementing that right takes a whole-of-government approach. For example, only the Minister of Finance can grant Canadians the ability to use their financial data for their benefit versus the banks’. Canada needs to take a whole-of-government approach to ensure that every policy and regulation is pro‑competitive. The Competition Bureau’s report illustrates the results of inaction.

Urgent change is needed.

Thank you, colleagues.