Competition review panel and scope of process revealed

The federal government revealed the make up and scope of the Competition Policy Review Panel (CPRP) earlier this month, but some elements of the process are yet to be determined. The CPRP will be mandated to conduct a review the Competition Act and the Investment Canada Act. The departments of Industry and Finance have provided this direction as well as identified other areas of interest. This would imply a broader review of competition policy including labour mobility and tax policy. Lawson Hunter, executive VP and chief corporate officer at BCE Inc., tells Network Letter that the mandate is broad enough that the panel can look at a lot of issues at play in terms of competition policy. He suspects that the panel won't get bogged down in a narrow study of the Competition Act, but will look at the broader matter of competition policy. Questions remain unanswered though with respect to the specific types of issues to be studied and it's unclear at this point how the panel is going to focus the debate and consultations. The competition panel could follow a model similar to the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel (TPRP), which issued a consultation document with a series of questions that served as the jumping off point for discussions. "How could you have a really useful consultation without a bit more idea of what the questions are? Hunter asks. "That would be a sensible way to go but that's something they're going to have to focus on when they get together and start thinking about the work plan." The panel was to have reported back to the government with recommendations for legislative change before the next federal budget, but Industry and Finance have since extended the timeline for reporting. Now the panel will have to report to the Minister of Industry by June 30, 2008 "with concrete recommendations to further enhance competition in Canada," reads the announcement. Hunter believes this was a good decision as it now gives the panel the time to do a more fulsome study of the issues at play. The extended time frame allows the panel to conduct solid background research on competition policies. Under the previous timeline it seemed "that there wasn't going to be much research," he says. Could a couple of hot-button issues such as foreign investment in telecommunications and broadcasting hijack the panel's mandate?Hunter doesn't believe so. "That's relatively well-trodden ground - I mean a lot of people have looked at it," he says of foreign ownership rules. "I think there are more important issues ." Two Parliamentary committees in the last few years have held extensive hearings into foreign investment in telecommunications and broadcasting. The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, which held hearings back in 2003, concluded that the government could allow more foreign investment in telecom while also protecting our cultural industries from foreign control. The Heritage Committee came to the opposite conclusion that same year: more foreign investment would lead to foreign control of Canada's cultural industries.

Competition review panel and scope of process revealed

News | 07/27/2007 2:36 pm EDT

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