Budget 2025 Boosts Competition, Affordability

Competition is central to productivity, innovation, and affordability, and a lack of competition in various sectors has led to far too high prices. Budget 2025 is launching some of the most ambitious, pro-competitive measures for Canada in a generation.

Budget 2025 announced the government's intention to boost competition, innovation, and productivity in the telecom sector through various measures:

• Pursuing a new "dig once" policy approach to nation-building projects to encourage coordinated installation of fibre optic lines as part of the development of major projects of national significance.
• Reducing regulatory burden required to deploy telecommunications infrastructure across the country, including by consulting on a streamlined tower-siting process later this year.
• Ensuring that industry has access to quality spectrum, including by releasing additional spectrum, consulting on a modernised Spectrum Licence Transfer Framework in late 2025-26, and continuing to use the streamlined framework for residual spectrum auctions established in 2021.
• Working alongside the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to implement the pro-consumer amendments to the Telecommunications Act announced in Budget 2024 that will allow Canadians to more easily renew or switch between home internet, home phone, and cell phone plans.  
• Ongoing efforts of the CRTC to implement the government's policy direction to enhance and protect the rights of consumers and to implement new rates for access to wholesale internet services and wireless roaming.

To improve choice and lower costs for financial consumers, the government has proposed measures to help Canadians switch between financial institutions and to increase fee transparency:

• Budget 2025 announced that the government intends to publish draft regulations by spring 2026 to prohibit investment and registered account transfer fees, currently costing Canadians on average $150 per account.
• Budget 2025 announced the government's intention to explore improving the transparency of cross-border transfer fees, including foreign exchange costs, for banks, as non-transparent pricing is causing consumers to pay more than expected to send their money internationally.
• Budget 2025 announced that the government intends to work with banks on ways to simplify the process of switching primary chequing accounts to other Canadian financial institutions.
• The government has requested the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada to prepare a report on the structure, level, and transparency of fees charged by Canadian banks.

Access to cheque fund rules are now over a decade old and have not kept pace with cost-of-living increases or technological advances.

• Budget 2025 proposed to amend the Bank Act to raise the first amount of immediately available deposited cheque funds from $100 to $150 and to remove the timing distinction between funds deposited in person and via other means, as well as introduce regulations to apply the change to trust and loan companies.
• Budget 2025 also announced the government's intention to make regulations in the coming months to reduce the number of days banks may hold deposited cheque funds before releasing them to their customers.
• In addition, the regulations will raise the current value threshold of $1,500-below which shorter cheque hold periods apply-which will increase the number of cheques eligible for earlier access to funds and benefit consumers reliant on cheque payments.

Small- and medium-sized banks, as well as provincial and federal credit unions, are critical for consumer choice across Canada. To help smaller financial institutions invest, scale, and compete, Budget 2025 proposed measures to support their unique needs:

• Budget 2025 proposed to amend the Bank Act and the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act to make it easier for federal credit unions to achieve scale and for provincial credit unions to enter the federal framework.
• Budget 2025 proposed legislative amendments to raise the 35 per cent public holding requirement threshold from $2 billion to $4 billion-allowing small financial institutions to grow larger before having to change their ownership structure.
• Budget 2025 announced the government's intention to work with banks to develop a voluntary code of conduct to strengthen smaller financial institutions' access to distribution channels for brokered deposits, a key source of funding for these institutions.

Next steps in the government's plan to support innovation in the financial sector include implementing new legislative frameworks to allow responsible innovation to flourish:

• Budget 2025 announced the government's commitment to advancing open banking by introducing legislation to complete the Consumer-Driven Banking Act and provide a data-mobility right in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act to facilitate economy-wide data sharing.
• Budget 2025 further announced that the government will accelerate the next phase of consumer-driven banking, including legislating the ability to direct actions, such as switching accounts or making bill payments, or "write access," by mid-2027, once Canada's Real-Time-Rail project is live and in widespread use.
• Budget 2025 also announced the government's intention to delegate oversight of the Consumer-Driven Banking Act to the Bank of Canada, building on its oversight activities of payment service providers.
• Budget 2025 also announces the government's intention to introduce legislation to regulate the issuance of fiat-backed stablecoins in Canada. This legislation will require issuers to maintain and manage adequate asset reserves, establish redemption policies, implement risk management frameworks, and protect the sensitive and personal information of Canadians. The legislation will also include national security safeguards to support the integrity of the framework so that fiat-backed stablecoins are safe and secure for consumers and businesses to use.