Think of Industry Minister James Moore as the matador, waving a red cape in front of a raging bull.
The bull, that's us – hard-working Canadians, angry and frustrated by consumer prices that seem to be consistently higher than in the U.S.
And the cloak is a diversion from all the practical things Mr. Moore and the Conservative government could be doing to enhance competition, but choose not too.
The government promised to do something about the price gap in its most recent budget, and on Tuesday Mr. Moore responded with the Price Transparency Act. The law would give the Competition Bureau expanded powers to investigate and publicly shame businesses found to be engaged in what he called "unfair" geographic price discrimination.
Speaking at a Toronto-area Toys "R" Us store, Mr. Moore said the law would "help ensure that Canadians are not unfairly charged more than Americans simply because we live in Canada."
The government backed off a threat to make the practice illegal and to sanction offenders. The retreat follows warnings from lawyers and other experts that the government would be on shaky legal ground and might provoke trade retaliation from the U.S. and other countries.
But that does not make this a good law.
The government could have done many things to inject more competition into the economy. For example, the government intentionally shields key sectors from the full weight of foreign competition, including telecom services, banking, airlines and the dairy and poultry industries. Ottawa also tolerates persistent interprovincial trade barriers, which impede the free flow of goods and labour across the country.
These policies, many of which were designed to solve problems that no longer exist, stealthily cost Canadians thousands of dollars a year.
The government isn't going there.
Ottawa could also increase duty-free exemptions for cross-border shopping and purchases made from U.S. online stores, as University of Toronto economist Nicholas Li suggested in a recent C.D. Howe Institute report. Doing so would quickly bring price discipline to Canada, as manufacturers and retailers move to protect their market shares.
The larger challenge for Mr. Moore and the Competition Bureau is that the reasons for the price gap are many and complex. An Industry Canada backgrounder released Tuesday cites a Statistics Canada estimate that put the price gap at "about 25 per cent" in 2011 when the dollar hovered near par. How much of that is due to foreign manufacturers applying unjustified countrywide prices will be tough to prove, particularly now that the dollar has sunk to roughly 87 cents (U.S.).
As Liberal Senator Joseph Day admitted after releasing an exhaustive 2013 report on the problem: "There is no one answer … the marketplace determines prices."
And the bureau isn't getting any more resources to do what could be an impossible assignment.
"There are so many variables involved that it's going to be very hard to arrive at a definitive opinion of what is unjustified or unfair. That's worrisome," remarked George Addy, a former head of the Competition Bureau who is now a partner at law firm Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP in Toronto. "Unfairness is often in the eye of the beholder."
Manufacturers may charge higher margins to cover higher transportation costs, taxes, labour rates and government regulations. It's hard to escape the reality that the U.S. market is much denser and easier to serve than Canada's population, which is spread thinly across a vast geography.
Another danger is that the Competition Bureau's powers become a political tool to go after unpopular industries or companies unfairly fingered by rivals. Just responding to an investigation could lead to hefty bills, even in the absence of unfair practices.
Watch for the government to begin touting the new law and its much-hyped "consumers first" agenda over the next few months in TV ads.
But don't be distracted. If you want to know what the government is really doing to shrink the price gap, keep your eye on the matador, not his cape.
(Editor's note: An earlier online version of this story stated that Senator Joseph Day is associated with the Conservative Party. He is in fact a Liberal senator.)