The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that Bill C-56 contains amendments to the Competition Act that are supposed to make groceries affordable again. The Globe's guest columnist Michael Osborne writes that most of the amendments are useless. The one good amendment proposes to broaden a provision that allows the Competition Tribunal to end agreements between rivals that harm competition. The bill adds a power to end agreements between non-competitors that aim to lessen competition. This could be used to remove property controls that the bureau claims are used by grocers to prevent competitors from opening up nearby. The amendments are mostly useless because competition law, which seeks to prevent monopolies and cartels, is not designed to solve macroeconomic problems like inflation. Rather, competition law only polices the acquisition and misuse of market power, by prosecuting price-fixing, preventing mergers that reduce competition, and stopping anti-competitive conduct by dominant firms. Mr. Osborne says Bill C-56 will not make groceries affordable again. He says the Competition Bureau found that margins are already low indicating that there is not much room for food prices to fall.