Competition Bureau head Matthew Boswell in Ottawa in 2022. He has announced he will be stepping down before the end of the year.Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail
Keldon Bester is the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project and a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. He has worked as a special adviser for the Competition Bureau.
In a statement this week, Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell announced he would be stepping down before the end of the year.
After nearly seven years at the helm of the Competition Bureau, Boswell deserves some rest and recognition. The best way for Ottawa to honour his tenure is to select a commissioner of competition that meets the moment in Canada.
Whether he’s considered a cowboy or not, Mr. Boswell brought the bureau, Canada’s competition cop, into the modern era. Under Boswell, the bureau challenged major mergers, successfully pushed for stronger laws and kicked off investigations into markets such as grocery, real estate and gas stations. Today, the agency is suing Google, one of the largest companies on the planet, alleging that the tech giant is abusing its dominance in the online advertising market. The last time that the bureau fought an alleged abuse of corporate dominance in court, the target was competition for in-flight meals out of the Vancouver airport.
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The change reflects an evolution away from a conservative enforcer taking narrow cases it believes are slam dunks, to one that takes on cases that matter to Canadians. Improvements in competition in any of the markets currently under investigation could make life easier for Canadians on a national scale.
Here, the marching orders for the next commissioner are straightforward: come prepared to move quickly to investigate the concentrated markets where more competition would ease cost-of-living pressures on Canadians.
A key to the success or failure of the next commissioner will be whether they can spur the bureau to move faster and more transparently than it has to date. Competition investigations, even before litigation, can drag on for years, and the black-box approach does nothing to build the confidence of Canadians. We are getting uncomfortably close to a decade since the bread price-fixing cartel became public. Aside from a few fines and a class-action settlement, we do not appear close to resolving an affair that cost Canadians dearly even before the cost-of-living crisis started to bite.
This is not entirely the fault of the bureau. Outside of merger approvals, corporations have little incentive to move quickly during an investigation. If companies are throwing sand in the gears of investigations to delay their completion, the next commissioner should be ready to use their bully pulpit to call out this behaviour. If there are legislative changes required for the bureau to offer more transparency to Canadians, the next commissioner should be asking for them. Confidence in our laws will correctly erode if investigations continue to span several years.
Mr. Boswell’s successor must also be ready to safeguard the independence of the agency at a time when pressures have never been higher on peer jurisdictions. In Europe, the bloc’s competition rules against American Big Tech have become pressure points for broader trade negotiations. In the United States, the Department of Justice antitrust division has been rocked by the resignation of attorneys alleging corrupt settlements for harmful mergers.
Though U.S. President Donald Trump’s relationship with Big Tech is mercurial, the next head of Canada’s Competition Bureau should be ready to face pressure to abandon or settle its continuing litigation against Google and to give American firms a pass to avoid future trade tensions. This would be a mistake. To protect the principle of fair application of our laws, no matter where a company is headquartered, the person who comes after Mr. Boswell must be ready to meet these challenges to the bureau’s independence.
On the opposite side of the ledger, there will be voices saying that what Canada needs is a commissioner that won’t make waves at home or abroad, in the interest of attracting investment and spurring growth. Such an approach would condemn Canadians to the costs of consolidation when concern about making it to the end of the month is at its highest.
At a recent conference, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said that her government would be hawkish on competition. The time is right for this approach. If this government wants make good on the hawk talk, hiring a worthy successor to Mr. Boswell is the first step.