Industry Regulation and Competition Policy - Op Eds

Published in the Financial Post. 

Just when the Americans have elected an aggressive president and just before the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (the old NAFTA) is due for re-negotiation, the Liberal government, with all-party agreement, supports an egregiously protectionist piece of legislation that will only make Canada’s political problems with the Trump administration that much worse.

As a self-inflicted injury, little surpasses Bill C-282, a Bloc Québécois member’s private bill that sailed through the House of Commons last year. The bill, helped along by the well-financed dairy lobby, would embed Canada’s supply management system in law, prohibiting any trade agreement from allowing as much as one additional gram…

Published in the Financial Post

Canada has not had a bank failure in over 30 years. But banking is changing, and so bank regulation may need to change, too.

Bank runs can now cripple an institution in a matter of hours, not days. Deposit insurance can no longer be counted on to prevent such runs. And a very different regulatory environment has emerged in the wake of the global financial crisis. Last year’s sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the U.S. and slower demise of Credit Suisse in Switzerland are examples of crises Canadian regulators might struggle to cope with if something similar happened here.

As banking evolves away from the system that existed in the last century, the risk of bank runs is likely to…

Published in the Globe and Mail.

There’s something wrong when a narrow interest group can dominate Canadian trade policy. That’s exactly what has happened in the case of the dairy industry, pushing its protectionist agenda on Canadians, not only in getting an ill-considered and self-serving piece of legislation to sail through the House of Commons but in having the Bloc Québécois make final enactment of Bill C-282 a red line for supporting the minority Trudeau government.

Bill C-282 is a Bloc private member’s bill that would exempt the supply managed dairy sector (as well as poultry and eggs) from all future trade negotiations. Even though the bill has already passed the House and is now in the Senate, Bloc Leader Yves-…

Published in The Globe and Mail

Millions of Canadians and hundreds of thousands of businesses were relieved to hear that on Saturday, the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) had ordered the country’s two major national railways, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City, to resume services, and for their workers to return to their jobs. At the same time, it sent their contract disputes to binding arbitration.

This decision, taken at the behest of Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon, came after lockouts by the two companies last week, and strikes called by members of the Teamsters union.

The CIRB had ruled earlier this month that the rail transport of commodities is not an essential service – not resulting in…

The Liberal government’s 23-move cabinet shuffle last week missed out on one sensible extra move. As a major review of Canada’s competition policy continues, it’s a good time to highlight competition’s crucial importance in the economy by giving it its very own minister. An effective and dedicated competition minister might actually raise Canadians’ incomes by thousands of dollars a year.

At the moment, competition policy is the responsibility of the minister of innovation, science and industry, who is currently François-Philippe Champagne, one of only seven ministers left unshuffled last week. Many observers think Champagne has been effective in executing the government’s priorities. But his portfolio is vast and he is…