regs to riches

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Canada’s All-of-Government Approach to Competition + Digital

Vass Bednar
and
Denise Hearn
May 25
8
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www.regs2riches.com

Twitter avatar for @judysquirrelsjourdain searles @judysquirrels
trying to get myself out of bed by repeating “come on barbie, let’s go party” in increasingly strange voices

May 4th 2022

675 Retweets7,991 Likes

Twitter avatar for @ChaseMitChase Mitchell @ChaseMit
Can tell I’m 37 because I’m getting a 4:30 PM coffee with somebody and structuring my whole night around it like we’re doing mushrooms in the desert

April 30th 2022

5,215 Retweets128,566 Likes

Twitter avatar for @TomVallettiTommaso Valletti @TomValletti
Schrödinger economics. 30 years of growing concentration, markups and inequality. Economists: “it’s efficient, all driven by economies of scale”. Inflation skyrocketing, prices to the roof. Economists: “it’s all fine, just capacity constraints and diseconomies of scale”.

May 14th 2022

61 Retweets237 Likes

Studies estimate that Canada could realize a 4-5% boost in productivity through pro-competitive regulatory reform and reduced barriers to entry.

Competition reform is gaining mini-momentum in Canada, with initial amendments to the Competition Act in the Budget Implementation Act (BIA), hearings at INDU and BANC (the Senate Standing Committee on Banking, Trade, and Commerce), and a *likely* consultation. These are all super promising policy activities.

Denise Hearn is a Senior Fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, and a co-lead of the Access to Markets initiative there. She is also the co-author of the Myth of Capitalism and a Canadian by birth.

Follow Denise on Twitter

She and I have two recent op-eds that contribute to the broader conversation on competition modernization. The first describes the less-sexy-but-still-super-important (!) competition issues that small businesses must navigate, and the second imagines what a more holistic, all-of-government approach to competition issues could look like and accomplish. I’ve linked to them below.

Twitter avatar for @globeandmailThe Globe and Mail @globeandmail
Ottawa must fix trade loopholes that hurt independent businesses
Opinion: Ottawa must fix trade loopholes that hurt independent businessesUpdating and expanding Canada’s approach to competition to reflect the needs of small- and medium-sized businesses is a necessary step to achieving better affordability for Canadian consumers and entrepreneurs aliketheglobeandmail.com

May 23rd 2022

3 Retweets7 Likes

Twitter avatar for @nationalpostNational Post @nationalpost
Opinion: Canada has lagged on policing Big Tech. That may be about to change
Opinion: Canada has lagged on policing Big Tech. That may be about to changeAn integrated, all-of-government approach to dealing with dominant technology companies could be our consolation prizenationalpost.com

May 11th 2022

2 Retweets10 Likes

We also had the opportunity to testify at INDU, which is the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Industry and Technology a few weeks ago.

📺 Watch us slay at INDU

In addition to offering five minute remarks, there is the option to submit a brief. The maximum length of a brief is ten pages. So we wrote a ten-page brief.

📓 Read our brief

One of the questions we received was related to the recent “Amazon’s Toll Road,” report. Our colleague Robin Shaban tested the findings of the report in the context of the Competition Act in a recent blog post. I really appreciate the approach they took with this blog post - start with the issue and ‘back that truck up’ into the Act. 🚚

Read: Gaps in Abuse of Dominance

I then hauled V-ass BACK to INDU on Friday. We discussed the proposed amendments to the Competition Act that are in the BIA. My remarks were probably me at my most political.

📺 Calling a spatula a spatula

Also someone was banging on my door while I answered a question, very stressful (turns out it was a plumber b/c a neighbour had a flood).


Bonus: Amazon content that didn’t make it to INDU

Amazon is also playing an increasingly active role in Canada, and may be subtly influencing competition policies at the provincial and federal level. As an online marketplace, Amazon competes directly with its third party sellers, and has referred to them as “internal competitors'' in its corporate documents. The company has been accused of copycatting its third-party seller’s products and selling them, more cheaply, under its Amazon Basics brand.

Regulators should be concerned, then, that Amazon’s “IP Accelerator,” which launched in 2019, came to Canada in 2021. The program matches third-party sellers on its platform with trademark and patent law firms, with which it has negotiated set rates to aid sellers in “protecting their brand months, or even years, before their trademark registration officially issues”

Given that Amazon’s corporate venture capital funds have been accused of stealing IP and copycatting products during the due diligence process, devastating promising startups, “protecting the IP” of businesses they consider competitors rings hollow.

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📺 I’ll be moderating a virtual discussion on the Competition Act and Canada’s digital future on Thursday May 26th - that’s tomorrow!

Twitter avatar for @CIGIonlineCIGI @CIGIonline
May 26, join us for a virtual event to discuss the Competition Act and Canada's digital future. Register now to hear from Canada's Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell (@CompBureau), @VassB, Brandon Schaufele, @RobinShaban, and Tahira Dawood:
Competition Policy Series: The Competition Act and Canada’s Digital Futurecigionline.org

May 12th 2022

7 Retweets11 Likes

📖 Suggested background reading:

  • The State of Competition Policy in Canada: Towards an Agenda for Reform in a Digital Era

  • Study of Competition Issues in Data-Driven Markets in Canada

  • Submission by the Competition Bureau - Examining the Canadian Competition Act in the Digital Era

  • Senator Howard Wetston’s Commentary on the Public Consultation with Respect to Examining the Canadian Competition Act in the Digital Era

  • Submissions to Senator Wetston

 


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www.regs2riches.com
A guest post by
Denise Hearn
Denise is an advisor, author, and project catalyzer. She is a Senior Fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project and co-lead of the Access to Markets initiative. She authors the Embodied Economics newsletter.
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