November 30, 2025

Welcome 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 instalment we have:

• CAMP urges CRTC to protect wireless customers during future network outages
• The U.S. government pushes Big Tech’s agenda in E.U. trade negotiations
• DOJ takes the easy way out on rental market algorithmic price fixing lawsuit

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Now let’s dive in.

CAMP Fights for Consumer Protection During Cell Blackouts

For many Canadians, telecoms are the first way we learn about monopolies. Canada’s telecom market has kept prices high and customer satisfaction low, but it has also introduced fragility to our economy. Centralization means failures in one part of the system can quickly have national implications. 12 million Canadians learned this firsthand when Rogers’ network went down in 2022. Customers were unable to contact with one another, make transactions, or even reach 9-1-1 in certain cases.

That’s why this month, CAMP urged the CRTC, Canada’s telecom regulator, to take steps to better protect Canadians in the event of future telecom network outages. In a regulatory proceeding on consumer protection in the wake of outages, CAMP proposed an approach that emphasizes transparency, easy reimbursement, and fair competition to better protect Canadians. This approach includes standardized public outage reporting, mandatory and automatic refunds for periods where service is unavailable, and priority restoration for users with fewer alternatives, such as rural users and persons with disabilities.

Though CRTC proceedings rarely make headlines, they are an important source of rules that protect the interests of Canadian telecom consumers. But those rules only reflect the needs of consumers when advocates like CAMP are at the table. This means going toe-to-toe with the legal teams of telecom monopolists, and CAMP is only able to do this work because of the programs the CRTC has in place to ensure representation from civil society voices. If we want the CRTC to reflect the needs of consumers, it’s important that these programs allow for the effective participation of those fighting for the needs of consumers. CAMP is glad to participate in this work, and we are committed to expanding our participation in the coming years. Whether in downtown Toronto or North of 60, Canadians deserve a fair deal for telecom services and CAMP will be there to make sure they get it.

📰 CAMP in the News 📰

• ​NDP leadership candidate proposes national public telecom options, sparking debate amongst advocacy groups (The Wire Report)
• ​Theatre: One-man oligopoly (Paul Wells)

Big Tech Wishlist Drives U.S.-E.U. Trade Negotiations

Big Tech is no stranger to influencing democratic governments, adopting sketchy tactics like astroturfing and sock puppets, as well as turning to threats when things don’t go their way. As Letters has covered, this problem has intensified under the second Trump administration, often nearing an explicit fusion of corporate and state power. In the latest example, European Commission VP Teresa Ribera, the E.U.’s top competition official, has called out U.S. “blackmail,” as American negotiators seek to use steel and aluminum tariffs as a wedge to get the E.U.’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) modified or repealed.

As the E.U.’s primary effort to regulate competition in digital markets, the DMA is an essential bellwether for the global fight against tech monopoly power. Alongside the U.K.’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, the DMA provides powerful tools to check the power of Big Tech and their effects on markets. These laws have shown how other countries can create domestic responses to Big Tech power, with Brazil recently proposing laws taking inspiration from both the DMA and traditional antitrust laws. These will be essential in protecting fair competition amid the consequences of consolidation in key sectors like cloud computing and app stores, both already under investigation by E.U. authorities.

Fortunately, to date Ribera and the E.U. appear to be standing tall. Enforcement of digital competition rules has not slowed under the second Trump administration and there is more attention than ever on diversifying away from Big Tech. but the fight is ongoing, and Canada will not be spared from the full court press that Europe is experiencing. Big Tech’s commercial interests are tied up monopolizing markets, spreading scams, eroding privacy, and manipulating our politics. If Canada wants to tackle these problems head on, we must be ready for the full force of the U.S.-Canada trade relationship to be brought to the table.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Shufelt, Forget a recession. What Canadians are living through is worse (The Globe and Mail)
• Griffiths, Corporate Canada has a Gerontocracy Problem (The Hub)
• Woodward, ‘Market Manipulation’ cases trending up in Canada: regulator data (CTV News)

No Quick Fix for U.S. Rental Price Fixing

If the first year of the second Trump administration has shown us, it’s the limits of the art of the deal. This week, the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust division cut a deal to settle its ongoing lawsuit with the real estate software giant RealPage, a major provider of rental pricing software for landlords. Why was the DOJ interested in RealPage? The software drew on information from other landlords that would have been otherwise unavailable, raising concerns about its ability to facilitate coordination rather than competition in rental prices.

Under the settlement deal, RealPage will not have to pay any fines or admit any wrongdoing, simply make sure non-public data used by the software is over a year old. It’s disappointing that the U.S. DOJ, while recognizing the potential for competitive harms, failed to adequately protect renters from the potential for exploitation. They’re not alone. In Canada, the Competition Bureau recently took a similarly tepid stand for Canadian renters. In investigating the same company, the Bureau said that while the software could definitely lead to collusion, it simply isn’t popular enough to warrant action.

Identifying a potential problem but failing to safeguard against it is shortsighted. Luckily, antitrust authorities are not the only game in town. U.S. states and cities have already begun prohibiting the use of the software in rental markets, and CAMP’s position is that the use of this software should be constrained if not banned for use in vulnerable markets. The goal of these systems is to maximize revenue for rather than competition between landlords, raising the risk of collusion by proxy. Competition laws have long taken a strong stand against harmful coordination, and we need to rediscover that stand as more business decision-making is offloaded to allegedly neutral automated systems.

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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