In a rapidly changing and uncertain world, Canada's new government is focused on what we can control. We are protecting our communities and our country. We are building our economy with major projects and millions more homes. We are empowering Canadians with lower costs and new opportunities to help you get ahead. We cannot control what other nations do, but we can control what we choose to build-and we are building Canada Strong.
Today, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Finance and National Revenue, highlighted core measures from this week's Budget 2025 to lower the prices Canadians pay by promoting private sector competition. Competition is central to productivity, innovation, and affordability, and a lack of competition in various sectors has led to unacceptable high prices. Budget 2025 is launching some of the most ambitious, pro-competitive measures for Canada in a generation.
For decades, Canada's telecom sector has been dominated by a few big players, resulting in mobile phone prices that are substantially higher than in many other countries. In Budget 2025, the government announced concrete steps to boost competition in the telecom sector to lower costs for Canadians through measures such as reducing regulatory burden required to deploy telecommunications infrastructure, releasing more spectrum, and making it easier to renew or switch between internet and phone plans.
The financial sector plays a key role in allocating resources towards a productive economy. Budget 2025 represents a new approach to competition and innovation in the financial sector, one that decisively advances a modernisation agenda and drives down costs for consumers. Budget 2025 announced plans to foster greater competition, innovation, and efficiency in the Canadian financial sector, including by helping smaller financial institutions to invest, scale, and compete, and by, among other actions, advancing payments modernisation, introducing legislation to complete the Consumer-Driven Banking Act, reinforcing competition as a core objective, and accelerating the next phase of consumer-driven banking by 2027.
Canadians have a right to choose where they bank without facing steep costs and long processes. To this end, the government will also prohibit registered and investment account transfer fees alongside other measures to reduce barriers to account switching. The government is also making it easier to access funds deposited by cheque, and will explore how to improve the transparency of cross-border transfer fees charged by banks. These measures will lower banking costs for Canadians while providing more banking alternatives.
The government will also introduce legislation to regulate the issuance of fiat-backed stablecoins in Canada, supporting their safe and innovative use cases such as payments, and will explore options and work with the private sector to encourage the adoption of artificial intelligence in the financial sector in ways that advance innovation and build trust in its use.
Over the coming months, the government will continue to work and engage with experts and stakeholders to inform further actions to support a competitive financial sector.
