Government-controlled protectionism is supposed to be good - and in a functioning democracy should benefit the people over businesses all of the time. The problem we have is far-(self)-righteous parties whose members only care about themselves and those who pad their pockets with bribes and "donations".

"Increasing competition" without lowering prices is meaningless.

Tell me you know nothing about economics without telling me you know nothing about economics. The effect of increasing competition in a heavily monopolized industry is to lower prices.

Edit: I slightly misread the quoted text. I had assumed that "increasing competition" meant breaking up Canadian monopolies, not opening the floodgates to other markets. I'm really surprised that a party called "Canada future" is against protectionism. I still stand by my point here, but I see where you're coming from.

Increasing competition adds downward pressure on prices and forces our domestic oligopolies to compete.

That's how markets work.

There's value in promoting a strong local industry, but when that industry fails to compete that's a market failure. The smaller the market the more likely it is to fail.