Letters: Ticketmaster vs. Toronto
September 21, 2025Welcome 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:
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Why is Ticketmaster Trying to Ruin Toronto?Other than telecoms, there are few more hated monopolies in Canada than Ticketmaster. With a grip on ticketing and venue services, anyone attending a live event in the last decade knows the displeasure of navigating the company’s walled garden. Hidden fees, ticket scalping bots, and clunky user experience are all hallmarks of Ticketmaster’s monopoly. While customer suffering has been longstanding, recently the company has amped up its efforts to ruin entertainment in the city of Toronto. This week it was announced that Ticketmaster, through its Live Nation subsidiary, would be closing the Velvet Underground, a storied Toronto venue that has been providing much needed performance space for nearly three decades. But the company’s reach extends to almost every live entertainment venue in Toronto, with the expected results. Ticketing services for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), provided by Ticketmaster, saw scalpers hoover up tickets en masse and resell them at ridiculous prices. The result? Movie fans who couldn’t stomach usurious prices missed out on films and while theatres for allegedly sold-out shows sat half empty. Why can’t Ticketmaster get a hold of the scalping bots on its platform? Because it’s too profitable to let them run wild. This week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued the company for turning a blind eye to bots, triple dipping on consumer fees, and deceiving customers about the true cost of tickets. The root of this problem goes to the 2010 decision to allow Ticketmaster and Live Nation to combine into the entertainment behemoth we know today. By creating an integrated ticketing and venue operation, the seeds for one of the most detested monopolies in North America was born. The recent U.S. scrutiny is not its first tangle with regulators, with the company settling a deceptive marketing case for the same conduct with Canada’s Competition Bureau in 2019, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) suing the company in 2024. But another round of investigation is unlikely to change the stripes of this company. Ticketmaster’s continued conduct in the face of repeated regulatory scrutiny is a reminder that there is only one solution to monopoly: break it up. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰One Jump Ahead of the Bread (Settlement) LineBetween 2001 and 2015, almost the entire Canadian bread market conspired to raise the price of packaged bread products, putting the squeeze on unsuspecting Canadians. While the Competition Bureau’s case against the cartel continues, last year Loblaws and George Weston Ltd. agreed to pay out $500 million to settle a separate class action lawsuit brought to compensate Canadians for the harms of the price-fixing cartel. As of this week, applications to receive compensation flowing from the class action settlement are now open, and CAMP encourages anyone who bought bread over the past two decades to claim the $25 they are owed before the application closes on December 12th. While $25 in our pockets is nice, the $500 million settlement is crumbs compared to the true cost of 15 years of gouging on a staple food. Some estimates put the cost to Canadians at nearly $5 billion, which would translate to over $350 per household in Canada. Other grocers alleged to have participated including Giant Tiger, Sobeys, Metro and Walmart are still amid legal proceedings and have yet to see penalties since the cartel was exposed in 2017, raising important questions about the speed of Canada’s competition law. Canada’s consolidated grocery sector makes this kind of price fixing possible, with big businesses able to control prices in an environment where Canadians have little choice. The bread saga also raises the question of just how deep down the grocery aisle this conduct goes. If grocers could distort bread prices, why should we believe they won’t do the same for other grocery staples? 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
FTC Turns Its Spotlight on AI ChatbotsThe FTC has launched an inquiry into the practices of seven companies that offer AI chatbots, looking into how the businesses manage the use of their products by minors, and the risks that this use can bring. As chatbots increasingly become part of the social lives of young people, acting as conversation partners, friends and even romantic partners, the safety of these relationships is in question. Earlier this week, U.S. Senators heard from parents who had lost children to suicide after forming attachments with AI Chatbots, part of a bipartisan push to address the growing sense of risk arising from how companies are courting the engagement of young people with chatbots. At the heart of the problem is the fact that chatbots are products offered by companies, not companions. No matter what their appearances on the surface, their behaviors are programmed to serve the interests of their designers: to keep people engaged on their platform. This is a grim extension of the business models of social media companies, where more engagement means more data collected, and more opportunities to serve advertising. Creating emotional dependence on AI chatbots creates dependence on the platforms themselves, and companies like Meta have already been lambasted for exploiting sensuality and a need for attachment to keep people talking. Although companies offering AI chatbots provide basic features to allow parents to control their child’s use of technology, these tokens are a distraction from the need for democratic input into the guardrails around this technology. We have ceded control of our social lives to social media companies under the false idea that these platforms were simply a reflection of our social networks and interests. We can’t let this corporate wild west approach extend even further into the development of the most vulnerable in our society. 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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U.S. regulator sues Ticketmaster and Live Nation, alleging illegal resale tactics
CBC
“Ticketmaster really is a frequent flyer when it comes to these practices of deceiving customers, overcharging and allowing scalpers to jack up the price of tickets,” said Keldon Bester, the Ottawa-based executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, a think-tank aimed at addressing monopoly power in Canada.
Letters: Keeping It Canadian
September 14, 2025Welcome 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:
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Teck Takeover Tests Whether Canadian Ownership MattersThis week, U.K. mining giant Anglo American announced its intention to purchase Teck Resources, a Canadian mining company focused on copper and zinc with operations in Canada, the U.S. and South America. Though the transaction is framed as a merger of equals, with three times the annual revenue of Teck, Anglo American is clearly the bigger fish in the pond. Beyond its impact on competition in the global mining market, the transaction is an early test of the Carney government’s commitment to maintaining Canadian ownership of our critical natural resources. Throughout the year’s trade tensions, the federal government has championed Canada’s critical minerals as an asset and source of leverage in our global relationships. Now we get to see whether that rhetorical rubber will hit the road. Anglo has made an effort to cast the transaction as Canadian as possible. The executive team will relocate to Vancouver and Teck stock will remain listed on the TSX. But ownership matters, and today’s executive team is not tomorrow’s. Time and time again these corporate commitments have proven shallow and temporary, and the decision to relocate execs, if it even delivers benefits in the first place, can be easily reversed. Canada recently tightened our laws on foreign investment to better protect the national interest, particularly when they relate to control of our natural resources. The Carney government must use this opportunity to demonstrate that they truly believe Canadian ownership matters. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰
Competition Bureau Launches Small Business Lending StudyLike it or not, banks live at the center of our economy. We depend on them to keep our hard-earned savings safe, access our money to make purchases, and extend credit when we need it. We often talk about banking competition in terms of the fees or interest we pay on financial products, but less appreciated is the role that competing banks in providing different chances at credit for borrowers. This is particularly important for the entrepreneurs who ask banks to take a bet on the future of their business when they apply for a loan to fund investment or ongoing operations. Not all banks are created equal, and more banks means more doors to knock on and pitch your business plan. That’s why CAMP is glad to see that the next area of focus for the Competition Bureau’s new market study powers will be the market for small businesses lending. The timing of the study couldn’t be more apt. Canada’s banking sector is highly concentrated and headed in the wrong direction thanks to takeovers like RBC-HSBC Canada. Canadian banks are famously risk averse, and while that leads to a more stable banking sector, it also makes it less likely that they’ll take a chance on a promising business trying to break out in an unfamiliar market. As a major driver of the Canadian economy, small businesses deserve to be served by a competitive banking sector. While just a first step, the Bureau’s attention on this important market is a welcome development. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
Same Same but DifferentLast week we covered the disappointing outcome of the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google’s search monopoly. To recap: after determining Google held a monopoly in search reinforced by multi-billion dollar deals with companies like Apple, Judge Mehta declined to break up Google’s search distribution channels or even block the company from engaging in these lucrative deals. The decision is aging like milk, with expert commentary raising the logical contradictions that led to such a hands-off remedy decision. A key factor in Mehta’s reasoning was that Google’s monopoly was approaching its best before date with the onset of generative AI chatbots ready to supplant traditional search. We pointed out last week that usage data suggests very different adoption patterns between AI chatbots and general search, and new data out this week reinforces that hypothesis. Data from analytics company Similarweb shows that in the last month while 95% of ChatGPT users also used Google search, just 14% of Google search users also used ChatGPT. This usage data is key to understanding how products and services do and do not compete and whether they should be considered competitive constraints on one another. Such strong overlap between ChatGPT and Google users suggests the idea that ChatGPT is eating Google’s lunch is exaggerated. Limited overlap in the other direction implies ChatGPT has a narrower or at least different set of uses relative to online search. The upshot being that, for the foreseeable future, monopolies in search matter. Judge Mehta framed his decision as a reflection of judicial humility, but the more data we see shows us that the judge may have overestimated the quality of his crystal ball. 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: Monopoly is Fine, Actually
September 7, 2025Welcome 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:
If you enjoy Letters, please considering sharing and supporting CAMP Now let’s dive in.
Google Gets a Slap on the Wrist for Its Search MonopolyFive years after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) launched their antitrust lawsuit against Google’s monopoly in online search, a judge has determined what should be done to restore competition. The answer? Not much. Despite finding that Google holds a monopoly in online search, reinforced by Google’s multi-billion-dollar annual payouts to companies like Apple, Judge Mehta has decided to effectively leave Google's dominance untouched. The DOJ had pitched Judge Mehta a sweeping remedy package: force Google to sell off the Chrome browser, a key source for the data underpinning the company’s search dominance, ban multi-billion-dollar payouts to Apple, and open Google’s search index to foster competition. But in the end the penalty for maintaining an illegal monopoly will be no more than a slap on the wrist. Google keeps Chrome, remains able to pay off potential competitors, and must share only a slice of its data to search competitors. One reason we’re particularly pessimistic? Even the competitors who the data-sharing portion of the remedy is intended to give a leg up are giving it a thumbs down. Judge Mehta’s hands off remedy relies on strong assumptions that the search market is being disrupted by AI, something that contradicts his own findings in the decision that found Google held a monopoly. Framed as humility, the decision not to act places enormous weight on one judge’s ability to predict the future. While disappointing, the Google search remedy decision is a reminder that we can’t always count on others to do our homework for us. If we want to create more vibrant and competitive markets, from online search to grocery store shelves, we need to be ready to do the hard work ourselves. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰· Lau, 'The problem of monopoly': Why Google's light anti-trust penalties could pose a dilemma for Canada (Financial Post) Canadians for Digital SovereigntyThis week, CAMP joined over 60 civil society representatives and organizations in calling on the Carney government to stand firmly in defense of Canada’s digital sovereignty. In important areas of our economy, from cloud computing, to advertising, to e-commerce, Canadian markets are dominated by a small number of American firms. In 2025, this longstanding monopoly problem has taken on a new dimension as these firms align themselves with a U.S. government increasingly hostile to Canadian interests. When we talk about digital sovereignty, we mean our ability as Canadians to have a say over the services and technologies we depend on every day. While not a kitchen table issue, the consequences of our dependence would be quickly felt if our relationship with the U.S. sours further. Just one example, continued access to the cloud computing services that a growing number of Canadian businesses and governments rely on could become a lever for concessions on trade and security that we would otherwise refuse. Ensuring our digital sovereignty doesn’t mean shutting Canada off from the rest of the world. It means diversifying the markets for these important digital services and standing firm on our right to have a say over how companies operate within our borders. We’re at a pivotal moment where our assumptions about our relationship with the U.S. and the global companies headquartered there have fundamentally shifted. If we want to maintain our independence and avoid becoming the 51st state tomorrow, we need to start taking our digital sovereignty seriously today. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
Breaking the Law, Breaking the LawAt CAMP, we’re picky. We don’t just want more competition in our economy; we want more fair competition. Fair competition is the kind that generates the benefits we often associate with competition: lower prices, better wages, more choices. Unfair competition is the opposite: ways to get ahead in a market that do not benefit or even harm consumers, workers, and entrepreneurs. Burning down your competitor’s store is fiercely competitive. But it’s an unfair method of competition that costs rather than benefits our economy. This week, Open Markets’ Legal Director Sandeep Vaheesan has a new paper laying out the costs and consequences of lawbreaking as a method of competition. The paper puts much needed intellectual weight behind the idea that not all competition is good competition. Business conduct is based on a common set of rules that law abiding businesses follow. When the source of a competitive advantage is not superior products or better pricing but instead skirting labour, environmental, or privacy laws, citizens are harmed by these unfair methods of competition. Vaheesan argues that this kind of lawbreaking should be considered a violation of not just the underlying laws, but also the laws governing fair competition in our economies. Vaheesan’s paper is an important reminder that we need to keep fair competition as our north star if we want to build an economy that works for everyday Canadians. Competition that puts workers in danger, poisons our environment, and erodes our privacy will cost us in the long run and punish companies that choose to compete fairly. Our competition laws need to benefit companies that play fairly and punish those that cut corners to get ahead. When a few players are allowed to flaunt the rules, everyone pays the price of a rigged game. 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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'The problem of monopoly': Why Google's light anti-trust penalties could pose a dilemma for Canada
Financial Post
This week, a U.S. judge issued a much-anticipated decision on the penalties Google LLC will face for violating antitrust law by illegally maintaining a monopoly over online search. But while U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ordered Google to share some data with rivals and placed constraints on its contracts, he rejected harsher sanctions proposed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) that could have led to the break-up of the tech giant through the forced divestiture of its Chrome browser. With that decision set to reverberate around the world, the Financial Post breaks down the implications for Google, the tech industry and for Canada.
Statement | CAMP Response to the Google Search Remedies Decision
September 3, 2025 [Ottawa, ON] - This week, after finding that Google maintained an illegal monopoly in online search, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta declined to dismantle that monopoly, instead ordering a remedy that is likely to have little effect on competition in the critical market. In particular, despite finding that Google's multi-billion dollar revenue sharing arrangements with companies like Apple had reinforced its illegal monopoly, Judge Mehta preserved the ability of Google to maintain these anti-competitive moats. The Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project (CAMP) has released the following statement in response to the decision.
"After five years of hard work on the part of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Google Search decision is an unfortunate reminder of the preference for monopoly in the U.S. court system," said Keldon Bester, Executive Director of CAMP. "Deciding to preserve a monopoly you determined to be illegally maintained signals that other monopolists are free to operate with impunity at the cost of citizens around the world. While an appeal of the decision is still possible, the outcome of the U.S. DOJ’s Google Search trial is a reminder that we cannot simply wait for our international peers to solve the problem of monopoly for us."