Letters: Good Eating
July 26, 2026Welcome to Letters from CAMP, a newsletter on anti-monopoly activity in Canada and abroad, brought to you by the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project. In this installment we have:
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Empire Backs Off Property Controls Following ScrutinyNothing says “we welcome competition” quite like a carefully, corporately qualified promise to stop blocking it. This week, Empire released a national policy governing the property controls it uses around Sobeys and its other grocery banners. The company will end the registration and enforcement of restrictive covenants, which prevent competing businesses from operating on land after the original retailer leaves. It will also end radius clauses and restrictions aimed at specialty food stores such as bakeries and butchers. Among major grocers, Empire has taken the clearest step to abandon the harmful practice since the Competition Bureau began investigating their use across the sector. While a welcome development, the announcement is a reminder of the limits of corporate commitments to do better and the need for independent action. The press release has the hallmarks of a corporate legal department. Empire commits to waiving property controls on properties identified in the Competition Bureau’s June court order and on clauses registered in Manitoba, where the clauses are now banned. But future grocery leases may still include exclusivity provisions, subject to limits on geography, product scope and duration. And for other existing controls, Empire has made the truly generous offer of submitting requests for exemptions to its internal review process. Even if Empire decided to abandon property controls completely, the issue reaches well past the grocery aisle. A recently surfaced covenant attached to a former Canadian Tire property in Cranbrook restricts a long list of non-grocery businesses from using the site until 2040. Empire’s commitment shows they’re on the back foot, but the work of improving grocery competition is just beginning. The Bureau’s investigation should continue, and more provinces should join Manitoba in banning the ability of incumbents to have a say over their competitor’s businesses. As companies begin to talk a big game on their love of competition, we need rules to make sure they’re playing fair. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰
The Grocery Code’s Game of ChickenCanada’s Grocery Code has a trust problem: the people it is meant to protect are still too nervous to use it. The code, intended to balance the relationship between small and large suppliers and retailers, entered full operation in January with the support of every major grocer and 200 businesses across the food supply chain. But it’s first public report has exposed an early obstacle: suppliers and independent retailers remain hesitant to raise concerns about powerful commercial partners for fear of retaliation. Following a lack of uptake, the office enforcing the code has begun accepting anonymous submissions, but participation among the potential pool of thousands of businesses remains low. The code was created after years of complaints about unexpected fees, unilateral contract changes and other practices imposed by major retailers. Its current design asks companies to first resolve individual disputes directly with their commercial partners, while identifying recurring patterns, and issuing guidance to encourage industry-wide compliance. That structure places considerable weight on suppliers feeling secure enough to speak. For all but the largest suppliers, reporting a grocer can carry implications for shelf space, order volumes, fees and future contracts. The value of the code depends on the ability of vulnerable players to rely on it for protection from large retailers. While still early days, there is clearly work to do on this front. The U.K. offers a useful case study in what happens when a grocery code finally grows teeth. Its grocery code became legally binding in 2010, an independent adjudicator followed in 2013, and fining powers arrived in 2015. The adjudicator can now investigate suspected breaches, publish findings and impose penalties reaching one per cent of a retailer’s annual U.K. turnover. If Canada wants to have a more balanced food system, it’s measures will need to evolve beyond hoping that dominant incumbents are willing to play nice. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
Toronto Takes Surveillance Pricing to the CheckoutThis week, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow advanced a motion directing city staff and legal officials to examine how the city can regulate surveillance pricing in grocery. Surveillance pricing, the practice of using personal data to estimate what a customer will pay and adjusts prices or offers has the power to turn shopping histories, location information, and online activity against consumers. Grocery apps and delivery platforms provide individualized storefronts, while electronic shelf labels make rapid in-store price changes easier to execute. Action against surveillance pricing is already generating results. Loblaw responded to the Toronto proposal with a permanent company pledge against surveillance pricing. But as the Empire example shows, corporate promises are no substitute for rules for a fair playing field. A new Policy Options piece by Sarah-Louise Ruder maps the broader government response. Federal competition law can address deceptive conduct, price fixing and anti-competitive uses of pricing algorithms. Privacy rules can govern the collection and use of inferred personal information. Provincial consumer-protection laws can classify surveillance pricing as an unfair practice, as Manitoba has done. Toronto’s motion adds the municipal layer and asks which local legal, licensing and disclosure tools can govern grocery transactions within the city. Toronto’s move is a reminder that every level of government has a role to play in creating a fair economy for Canadians. We shouldn’t have to worry whether factors we can’t control are putting a higher price in front of us compared to our neighbour, especially when it comes to staples like food. Our grocery bills should reflect the value of the goods in the cart, with personal data kept out of the calculation. If you have any monopoly tips or stories you'd like to share, drop us a line at hello@antimonopoly.ca
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Letters: Driving Investment
July 19, 2026Welcome to Letters from CAMP, a newsletter on anti-monopoly activity in Canada and abroad, brought to you by the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project . In this installment we have:
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Competition Can Be Canada’s Capital CatalystIn the Carney government’s plan to pivot Canada’s economy away from U.S. dependency and seek new trade relationships, the word on everyone’s lips is investment: public or private, domestic or foreign. The logic is clear, Canada’s productivity growth continues to lag, and investment is needed to break out of this state of stagnation. Alongside trade deals, the Carney government has put investment-focused tax credits and cutting red tape on the menu. But despite years of record private sector profits, investment numbers continue to lag. As CAMP executive director Keldon Bester argues in a new piece for Corporate Knights, we shouldn’t be surprised. To really drive the kind of investment that will bolster Canada’s productivity, we need to expose more sectors to competition and increase the level of competition for Canadian workers. Without the pressure of competition, firms have little incentive to reinvest profits into their own businesses. Without competition for workers, firms are equally unlikely to substitute labour for labour-saving technologies. For decades Canada has relied on a model that sacrificed competition for consolidation and kept Canadian wages suppressed to attract foreign companies with our highly educated discount workforce. We need to reverse course on both approaches if we want to break out of the secular stagnation that has plagued Canada’s productivity growth. As the federal government works to operationalize a “whole of government” approach to competition, it needs to look beyond tax credits and red tape to do so. The narrative that greater profits will spur investment conflicts with the data on how companies are behaving as profits climb. While reducing regulatory barriers can help, effects will be concentrated to industries where large-scale projects crisscross federal and provincial regulatory schemes. By unleashing competition for markets and for workers, Canada can build a high productivity, high-wage economy. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰· Google must share search data, open Android to rival AI firms, EU says (Global News) Beef Price-Fixing Settlement Reminds Us of Canada’s Cartel ProblemNot too long ago, Canadians got a few bucks back from a class-action settlement over the long-running bread price-fixing scandal between major bakers and grocers. Now, Canadians who purchased beef products since 2015 may be eligible for part of an $8 million settlement with cattle slaughter firms, JBS and National Beef while litigation against other defendants, Tyson and Cargill, continues. Class action lawyers presented the court with evidence that over a seven-year period, executives and employees communicated with the aim to artificially limit the supply of beef, driving up prices and maximizing profits. In allowing consolidation to run wild, Canada has created the conditions for cartels to flourish. The situation in beef processing is extreme. Three facilities, two owned by Cargill and one owned by JBS, account for 85% of Canada’s total capacity. This gives the biggest firms an incredible amount of power as the gateway to markets for beef producers in Canada. While record low supplies of beef have shifted the power back to ranchers temporarily, the conditions of cartelization will remain unless market concentration falls. Canada’s new national food security strategy includes efforts to make it easier for regional players to compete in the national processing market, but Canadians also need to see stepped up cartel enforcement to deter future backroom deals. Price fixing scandals like these will continue to emerge until we have diversified markets and real penalties for cartel conduct. A decade long wait for restitution is not enough to dissuade would-be cartel members. Canada needs to have more eyes on our markets and move faster to break up the cartels making life more expensive. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
FTC Settlement Hands Control Back to FarmersFarming is notoriously difficult. Modern day farming relies on an array of complex machinery, and when that machinery breaks down a few days of downtime can make all the difference. But as the complexity and digitization of farming equipment has increased, the control individual farmers have over equipment has headed in the opposite direction. Today farmers are largely at the mercy of authorized dealers who control both access and pricing to repairs and valuable data. That tightening grip birthed the right to repair movement around the world, one that just notched a major victory against John Deere through the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Beginning in 2022 with complaints from farmers’ unions and research groups, the case against John Deere brought by Lina Khan’s FTC alleged that the company restricted software and data necessary to perform standard repairs. This forced farmers to pay higher prices at licensed dealers where ownership has increasingly consolidated into larger corporate networks. Last week, the settlement reached because of the FTC case ordered John Deere to make repair resources available to independent repair shops for 10 years, on fair and reasonable terms. This means independent shops can now compete and bring down prices and wait times for farmers. There are caveats to this victory. John Deere’s monopoly over farming equipment remains in place. They will still maintain proprietary control over the software and hardware necessary to repair their equipment. Interoperability, the ability to use third party hardware and software to repair farm equipment, is not a requirement of the settlement. But Canada can take these caveats and craft a stronger approach to opening the farming equipment market. Interoperability and loosening the intellectual property grip of companies like John Deere would hand more control to farmers when they need it most. Canada correctly has food security on the brain, and empowering farmers must be a part of that work. If you have any monopoly tips or stories you'd like to share, drop us a line at hello@antimonopoly.ca
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Letters: Play Ball
July 12, 2026Welcome to Letters from CAMP, a newsletter on anti-monopoly activity in Canada and abroad, brought to you by the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project . In this installment we have:
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Canada Needs More Sports TeamsThis week, Rogers cemented its control over the Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment group, buying the remaining 25% of the company it did not already own from Kilmer sports for $4.35 billion. This means our favourite telecom is now the sole owner of the Toronto Argonauts, Maple Leafs, Raptors, Football Club, Blue Jays, related minor league teams, Toronto’s major arenas, and Sportsnet. For fans, this doesn’t mean much. By already being the majority shareholder, this is just icing on Rogers existing monopoly over Toronto sports. But if we did want to make things better for fans, we need to look at why the supply of sports teams is so limited. To do so, we need to look a level up the chain, at the professional sports leagues themselves. North American leagues control the supply of teams through the allocation of franchises, which determine how many teams play in the league and where they can be based. Controlling supply lets leagues manage demand; they benefit from network effects, control the labor market for athletic talent, and set salary caps to prevent intra-league domination. This control allows leagues to effectively maximize their revenue on things like merchandise, tickets, and broadcast subscriptions, regardless of the fan demand. Recent years have shown that Canadians are showing up for their teams across all kinds of sports. But if we want more games and cheaper tickets, Canada needs more teams, in more cities, and in more sports. One possibility is through competing sports leagues. Leagues like the PWHL, WNBA and NSL, are growing in popularity and interest from investors. But existing leagues need to be put under the antitrust spotlight. The ability of these organizations to restrict the supply of sport should be a serious consideration for enforcers looking to deliver for Canadians. Another gem in the Rogers family crown is nothing to get excited about. More Canadian teams to root for is. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰
The Costs of Online Gambling in Ontario Tick HigherFour years after the Ontario government allowed private online casinos to operate, the unsurprising list of side effects continues to grow. Crisis calls to Ontario’s gambling helpline, ConnexOntario, have nearly doubled in since 2020. Strapped for resources, frontline workers at the non-profit are “drowning” as they are forced to deal with higher volume and more complex calls for help. The rise in gambling related crises is a direct result of the infusion of the mechanics of gambling into the social and economic lives of Canadians, particularly young men. Gambling is everywhere young people are. Video games increasingly use slot-machine mechanics to drive engagement and spending. Roblox has been accused of hosting illegal cryptocurrency casinos for children. Advertisements for casinos and betting platforms are constant features of sports games. On Amazon owned Twitch, gambling streams took off during the COVID pandemic. Now, gambling, in the form of prediction markets is being added to financial services like Wealthsimple, blurring the line between the stock market and the casino. Framed as an embrace of personal freedom, the liberalization of gambling regulation is instead about creating a race to the bottom on business models based on predation, exploitation, and addiction. The Ontario government may tout that they are leaders “in the world when it comes to online gambling,” but it’s fair to ask if this is a race Canadians want to be winning. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
The EU’s Google Fine Sticks, But Has Anything Changed?Earlier this month, one of the EU’s blockbuster competition law cases against Google came to a close. After 8 years in front of the courts, Google’s last appeal was dismissed, and the company must pay the €4.125 billion fine (about $6.66 billion CAD). The content of is important: Google abused its ownership of the Android operating system to give favourable treatment of its own app ecosystem, elbowing out potential competition. As one of two major mobile operating systems on the planet, fair competition in the Android market is a multi-billion-dollar question. This case is a prime example of how vertical integration can lead to abuses of corporate dominance. Google used its control over the Android operating system to control the market for applications. By tying their browser and search applications to Android, the court concluded that Google gained an unfair advantage over competing technologies. This is in part due to the powerful role of defaults and inertia have in shaping consumer decision making. When we aren’t presented with alternatives, we tend to take what we’re given. But the case is also an important reminder of the limitations of financial penalties in competition policy. Even major fines over the last decade represent just a fraction of Google’s ever-growing annual revenue. While penalties for problematic conduct are important, they must be paired with remedies that change the structure that allowed the conduct to happen in the first place. Eight years later, Google’s control of the mobile operating system market hasn’t been upset in a meaningful way, and it won’t be until we learn that fines cannot be the limit of our imagination. If you have any monopoly tips or stories you'd like to share, drop us a line at hello@antimonopoly.ca
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Letters: Keeping It Canadian
July 5, 2026Welcome to Letters from CAMP, a newsletter on anti-monopoly activity in Canada and abroad, brought to you by the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project . In this installment we have:
If you enjoy Letters, please consider sharing and supporting CAMP. Now let’s dive in.
Whose Parks are They Anyway?National holidays on a Wednesday are never ideal. But this week, Canadians across the country celebrated Canada Day with their friends and families. And what’s a more Canadian thing to do than to load up the car and enjoy one of our famous national parks? But Canadians looking to enjoy the natural wonders of our country may be surprised to learn about an American monopoly lurking in the Rocky Mountains. In our 2025 brief, Mountain Monopolies, CAMP explained how Canada’s park and competition regulators allowed an American company to establish a foothold in Banff and Jasper, home to the country’s most popular national parks. The consequences are plain: the company’s own investor materials tout the “pricing power” of these “deep competitive moats.” With operations spanning attractions, hospitality, and transportation, Pursuit has become a major presence in the parks, with no sign of slowing down. The result is less choice and higher prices for visitors to the crown jewels of Canada’s park system. Six months since we published that brief, nothing has changed. What needs to be done? Past acquisitions should be reversed, and Parks Canada must be given a mandate to protect competition and Canadian ownership in our national parks. There is a narrative, especially around Canada Day, that Canada’s parks should belong to Canadians. This Canada Day, the presence of this mountain monopoly is a reminder that more work needs to be done to make that narrative a reality. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰The Costs of Private Equity’s Debt WishThe supply shocks of COVID-19 and the second term of President Trump have made not just the growth, but the resilience of the Canadian economy a top-of-mind concern. While the conversation often occurs at the macro level, resilience is the product of individual actors being able to withstand the shocks of economic cycles. In the Toronto Star this week, CAMP fellow Rachel Wasserman lays out how the growing role of private equity in one slice of the economy is undermining that resilience. The unfortunately named junk bond issuers - riskier companies who must pay a premium on debt to attract lenders - are increasingly entangled with private equity firms. Nearly absent in the early 2010s, private equity now represents nearly half of the speculative debt asset class that these businesses rely on. The problem? The extractive playbook of these buy out private equity firms burdens these companies with unnecessary debt, making them more vulnerable to external economic shocks. As more firms become less resilient, the risk to the broader economy increases should a downturn occur. With cash that would otherwise fund investment or rainy day reserves going to private equity firms, Canada’s economy ends up with sluggish growth and a cracking foundation. To create a more resilient economy, Canada needs to reduce the role of private equity and foster a culture of building rather than extracting value from businesses. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
Low EggspectationsAs we’ve seen in recent years, a rise in the price of a staple good is consistent fuel for furious discussion about the cause of the increase and what, if anything, should be done about it. This was certainly the case for the explosion in the price of eggs in the United States from 2022 – 2025, which saw average prices jump from $1 USD to $8 USD per dozen. While the standard story was a price response to constrained supply following the onset of avian bird flu, there was always more to the story. In 2025, anti-monopoly lawyer Basel Musharbash released a blockbuster investigation into the long-running effort to monopolize and manipulate American egg markets. This research was quickly met with derision from an economist crowd who consistently believe that anti-monopolists are jumping at shadows and that there was nothing to be done about inflated prices. But this week, the Wall Street Journal reported on texts and emails between executives of the American egg producers who dominate the market that clearly indicate a coordinated effort to push up the price of the staple food. These kinds of communications becoming public are a) grimly entertaining and b) a reminder of how business works in monopolized markets. “Great job in the northwest today!” says one executive to another as their wholesale bidding strategy results in record-breaking prices for American families already struggling with the cost of inflation. When we allow markets to consolidate, we increase the risk of this cozy behaviour proliferating. We’re not in the “I told you so” business, but the revelation of this price fixing scheme is a reminder that sometimes there really is something, or someone, in the shadows. If you have any monopoly tips or stories you'd like to share, drop us a line at hello@antimonopoly.ca
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Letters: The Only Game in Town
June 28, 2026Welcome to Letters from CAMP, a newsletter on anti-monopoly activity in Canada and abroad, brought to you by the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project . In this installment we have:
If you enjoy Letters, please consider sharing and supporting CAMP. Now let’s dive in.
Ticket Resale Fails at ScaleResearchers take note, the 2026 World Cup is shaping up to be a case study on monopolized markets and anti-consumer experiences in a league of its own. While fans watch football in record numbers, FIFA’s embrace of dynamic pricing has driven ticket prices to record highs. And then there’s resale. By infusing algorithms and speculation into ticketing, scalping and scamming has driven the ugly economics of the beautiful game into the spotlight. Now, many would-be attendees are finding the tickets they already paid a premium for failing to materialize, sometimes finding out hours or minutes before the game. Resale markets are prime venues for abuse and deception. The issue at hand is known as “speculative ticketing,” where scalpers, anticipating that prices will drop right before a game, list tickets they don’t have in hand. Resale platforms, like Stubhub, take a cut from transactions they facilitate, holding the buyers' money, but not the sellers’ tickets. This puts all the risk on consumers, with none of the guarantees. Aside from speculative ticketing, problems with ticket transfers using FIFA’s App meant problems getting tickets bought through resale platforms failed to appear. FIFA urged fans to use its official resale marketplace, where they take a 30% fee from every transaction, a flex of monopoly power that would make Ticketmaster blush. The World Cup is a showcase of the incredible mess that is North America’s mass entertainment market. Protecting consumers from speculative ticketing is one way that authorities should intervene— if consumers pay for something, they should know if they’re paying for a ticket, or the possibility of a ticket. Resale platforms control these marketplaces, and they should have a stake in assuring resellers have the goods, and aren’t trying to game the system. But there’s a lot more to be done. Ontario took an important step in the right direction when it capped resale prices and increased penalties, but it needs to make sure these are enforced, and don’t increase the monopoly power of firms like Ticketmaster. For those types, regulators should be handing out red cards. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰
Europe bets on cloud competitionThis week the European Commission moved to designate two of the world’s biggest cloud computing providers, Amazon and Microsoft as “gatekeepers” under the Digital Markets Act. This major regulatory move is a long time coming, and shows the EU is taking the relationship of competition and digital sovereignty seriously, by targeting the financial and technical mechanisms that these companies use to keep their clients locked in and dependent. It’s no surprise that some of the potential interventions closely track CAMP’s recommendations in our Parting Clouds report. Canada should keep a close eye on how the Europeans and others are tying the need for domestic computing capacity to competitive markets. Canada’s AI strategy has committed two billion dollars to building sovereign infrastructure, but whether that buys Canada out of its digital dependence is a dubious proposition. No amount of spending will matter if public and private sector organizations can’t choose who they work with. Right now, Big Cloud’s power is entrenched, and their clients are locked in. They are prevented from switching by financial costs like egress fees, and technical hurdles that mean rebuilding key systems and retraining staff. As AI becomes more integrated with these technologies, this will get even worse. The original promise of the cloud was a shared digital infrastructure that could treat storage and computing power as a utility, allowing specialized providers to handle storage and networking. Over time, it has become a way for US big tech to control the critical infrastructure for commerce and governments rely on, and how innovation works around the world. If we want domestic options to be viable at all, interoperability and portability must be part of government’s strategy, and competition enforcement must discipline the market. Otherwise, Canada will never recover control over its digital destiny. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
CAMP’s Privacy SummerHeading into high summer and Canada day celebrations, Canadians have a few months to enjoy the sun, relax, and try to make sense of our government’s approach to digital regulations and privacy. On the one hand, Bill C-22, heading to the Senate in the fall, would require tech providers to retain metadata describing user activity and even weaken privacy-preserving technologies like encryption. On the other hand, Bill C-36 on the private sector use of consumer data proposes to make privacy a “fundamental right,” although how well it will protect Canadians remains to be determined. Tech companies who compete with Big Tech often court consumers by promising protections from corporate surveillance and built in cybersecurity measures that keep people safe from cybercriminals. If smaller providers struggle with compliance, or even leave the market, it will mean fewer alternatives for Canadians, and can make our tech sector less competitive globally, if it means compromising their products. Privacy isn’t a niche concern, it’s a market position that recognizes people don’t like the internet that advertising and surveillance capitalism has built, and how it leaves them vulnerable. As the conversation on these laws moves forward, CAMP will stay focused on how these proposals will protect Canadians as citizens and consumers, how well they meaningfully rein in the Big Tech companies who dominate our digital lives, and how they affect the ability for people to develop innovative and competitive alternatives. The government’s interest in duties of care and transparency, and a recognition of the need for good regulators and research are a good sign, but they will need to show, not tell, Canadians they can be trusted to navigate these complexities. If you have any monopoly tips or stories you'd like to share, drop us a line at hello@antimonopoly.ca
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Complex Relationships
June 21, 2026Welcome to Letters from CAMP, a newsletter on anti-monopoly activity in Canada and abroad, brought to you by the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project . In this installment we have:
If you enjoy Letters, please consider sharing and supporting CAMP. Now let’s dive in.
Holistic Approaches to CompetitionWith the National Food Security Strategy coming hot out of the oven last week, the Competition Bureau has just announced an examination into Canada’s food supply chain, and how competition issues are contributing to rising food prices. This examination, which should take about a year, is a first step toward grounding more focused interventions, and as government has allocated $130 million over 10 years for the Bureau to focus on the food system, we can expect a lot more to come. Going beyond the scope of the Bureau’s 2023 grocery market study, this examination will look higher up the supply chain as well— from fishing, farming and food processing, to logistics and distribution, and finally into retail, with callouts to anti-consumer practices like algorithmic pricing and shrinkflation. The scope of this examination is massive, but if the Bureau wants to deliver for Canadians, it ought to leave no stone unturned. In a complex system like food supply, which involves many inputs, actors, processes and capital, market concentration and barriers to competition at any stage can drive up prices for producers and businesses, which eventually get passed down to consumers. As CAMP’s own research has shown, this is certainly the case, with concentration squeezing farmers, vendors, and independent grocers at every step of the process. To do this investigation right, the Bureau needs to hear from Canadians, from farmers and entrepreneurs trying to bring their products to market, to grocers trying to offer competitive prices, to food processors and consumers. But as rising food prices put pressure on more Canadians, market power in our food system is not only a universal issue, it’s becoming a matter of national concern that should be as impossible for our governments and regulators to ignore as it is for everyday Canadians. This announcement is promising, but we’ll be watching the follow-through. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰
Partial PrivacyCanada’s privacy laws are decades old, and ill suited to addressing some of the defining challenges of the day, from a time before people conducted much of their economic and personal business online, and before companies started tracking that behaviour to analyze and sell. This week, the federal government has launched a third attempt to modernize the laws that govern how the private sector collects, uses, and discloses the personal information of Canadians. At a glance, Bill C-36, the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act (PPCDA) comes with a consent-to-collect framework, strong regulator, some interesting definitions, but not a lot to say on pressing privacy issues. The government suggested the PPCDA would tackle surveillance pricing, but that seems to be just window dressing; businesses that use personal information for pricing decisions will have to be transparent about it, but this won’t do much for consumers who don’t have a choice to shop elsewhere. CAMP has argued before about the need to single out specific classes of information as particularly sensitive, but the PPCDA merely says that businesses need to take that sensitivity into account. The law doesn’t cover location tracking data at all, despite the massive privacy and national security risk. Overall, the PPCDA struggles to balance commercial interests against Canadians privacy, and points to important issues without decisive action. It puts a lot of weight on forthcoming regulations and subjective categories, like what a “reasonable person” would consider an “appropriate” or “legitimate” use or disclosure of sensitive data. This will require an active regulator to systematically review business practices, which the legislation suggests will be built from scratch under close Ministerial guidance, a problem unto itself. As the bill moves forward, Canadians should seek more concrete rules for the collection and use of sensitive data and put pressure on what constitutes legitimate business interests in the age of surveillance capitalism. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
Mythos MadnessWhile other AI companies remain embroiled in controversy, Anthropic has tried to play the model company, going against the US administration by befriending the Pope and saying it won’t do mass surveillance. But their ongoing conflict with the US administration has now gone global in scale, and led to a ban on the use of their latest models by any non-US person, and then a withdrawal of model access for almost everyone in the world. Prime Minister Carney correctly identified the underlying monopoly problem of the situation, telling reporters it was based on an “over-reliance on certain models.” The models in question are Fable and Mythos, allegedly so powerful they could wreak havoc on the world’s digital systems by rapidly identifying critical vulnerabilities. Understandably, that meant big companies and nation-states wanted to get their hands on it, to start securing their systems and preparing, with the US administration seeking to keep that power for themselves. There are parallels to be drawn between the AI and nuclear arms races, but in this case, the power increasingly lies with one company’s CEO and product, with global cybersecurity in the balance. Anthropic’s choices around access to its models have big consequences for competition, because the company controls not only one of the most prevalent AI products on the market, it also controls some of the most important resources for further innovation and development: its models. Anthropic has cut off model access to a competitor, abruptly changed its pricing and subscription structures, and recently came under fire for secretly limiting the usefulness of its models for AI research, preventing would-be competitors from developing products. Now, conflict over that control is putting the world’s digital infrastructure, cyber security, and its people at risk, and it isn’t yet clear if global governance, domination, or mutually assured destruction will be the result. If you have any monopoly tips or stories you'd like to share, drop us a line at hello@antimonopoly.ca
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