Letters: Build It Up
August 31, 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.
Build Canada Homes Needs Developers of All SizesThis week, CAMP responded to the Build Canada Homes market sounding guide, a consultation intended to shape the future of the federal government’s efforts to address the housing crisis. While us at CAMP defer to housing policy experts, we are experts in monopoly, and one piece of the consultation gave us pause. In the guide, the government indicated it would focus on striking a small number of large deals, with 300 residential units floated as a cap. While a desire for scale is understandable, this approach risks favouring incumbents, sidelining smaller firms with innovative models that could increase productivity and affordability, and leaving smaller communities grappling with inflated housing costs. This approach could result in what housing policy experts at the Missing Middle Initiative refer to as the “valley of death” for smaller companies, blocking their ability to scale up and bring novel construction methods into the market. Beyond innovation, smaller and more remote communities facing similar housing shortages are ill-served by a model that focuses solely on large projects. Canada’s housing crisis is often seen as a big-city problem, but communities of all sizes face skyrocketing prices. In markets like these, projects under the 300-unit threshold are critical. For example, in recent years the New Brunswick city of Moncton added an average of 1,100 units annually. That means that Build Canada Homes current criteria would require a single developer to account for more than a quarter of new housing to participate. The scope of Canada’s housing crisis means it will take the efforts of players of all sizes. Excluding these firms in the design of Build Canada Homes risks entrenching incumbents, stifling innovation, and overlooking the affordability challenges facing smaller communities. To make the greatest contribution to addressing Canada’s housing crisis, Build Canada Homes must broaden its scope to include diverse participants and project sizes. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰
Keeping Canadian Advertising CanadianWhat is advertising worth to the Canadian economy? New research by Canadian Media Means Business shows the role of advertising within our wider media ecosystem, employing nearly 200, 000 Canadians in journalism, television production, and advertising and contributing over $20 billion to the country’s GDP. But the continued existence of over half of those jobs depends on whether we act to keep those advertising dollars in Canada. Today we’re failing. Sectors in the broader media ecosystem have been sheeding jobs year-over-year as more advertising money - from 76% in 2017 to 92% in 2022 - flows straight to foreign advertising platforms like Google, Meta, and Amazon. For better or worse, advertising plays an important intermediary function in our media ecosystem: advertising money goes to publishers in news and entertainment to subsidize their operations and lower the costs of those goods and services to Canadians. As advertising systems have grown in scale and moved to rely on automated online auctions, the platforms that facilitate these transactions have become more powerful and more consolidated. These companies now act as gatekeepers in the online advertising industry, holding Canadian advertisers and publishers in check while extracting billions from our media economy. Right now, Google’s online advertising monopoly is on trial before the Competition Tribunal, after years of alleged anticompetitive practices. If the Competition Bureau is successful in their case, it offers some hope to shake up the industry and keep more of those advertising dollars within our borders. But we can’t just rely on the Competition Bureau to fix Canada’s advertising ecosystem. Policy makers, advertisers, and consumers all have a role to play in keeping Canadian advertising Canadian. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
Trump Tells Countries to Leave Tech AloneDespite some mixed signals, it’s clear that Trump is in the tank for Big Tech. In another howler of a Truth Social post (truth?), the U.S. President reiterated calls for companies to abandon their efforts to put any guardrails on the behaviour of American tech companies. This time, the President warned that efforts to regulate Big Tech would be met with tariffs and export restrictions on key pieces of U.S. technology. Once again, despite Trump’s flirtation with economic populism, his actions continue to carry water for the interests of the world’s largest tech companies. What has Canada gained so far in backing down on elements of our digital policy agenda? Giving up on Canada’s Digital Services Tax, which would have netted us billions annually to offset Big Tech’s extraction from our economy has seemingly gained us nothing. Canada was hit with tariffs all the same and our negotiating position appears to be deteriorating. While today we can think of this bullying as limited to digital policy, it’s unlikely that Trump will stop there. Today the U.S. is caving to its own industry pressures to roll back rules on “forever chemicals” linked to declining birthrates and cancer and repealing pollution laws and trade partners are unlikely to be exceptions. Capitulating on digital policy today sets the table for a broader rollback of the laws that keep Canadians safe and healthy. Canada needs to stand firm in its ability to police the actions of companies that operate within our borders and impact our citizens. Allied nations in the E.U., U.K. and Australia are pushing forward with legislation to curb Big Tech’s ability to dominate markets, avoid privacy protections, and turn a blind eye to scams. Building on these international relationships and moving as a pack offers the best way forward. We would do well to remind our government that ceding sovereignty tends to be a one-way street. 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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Submission | CAMP Response to the Build Canada Homes Market Sounding Guide
Canada's housing crisis has affected communities across the country, from our largest cities to our most far-flung hamelts. Solving this crisis for all Canadians, not just those in Vancouver and Toronto, will require the efforts of players big and small in Canada's housing market.
In our submission to the Build Canada Homes Market Sounding Guide, CAMP urges the federal government to include space for smaller, innovative developers serving communities of all sizes. A response to the housing crisis focused only on the largest players will miss the opportunity to bring novel approaches into the market and leave behind communities where smaller-scale projects would have a meaningful impact.
Read the full submission here
Would more airline competition fix flying in Canada?
CBC
The fallout of a recent Air Canada strike is amplifying calls for more domestic airline competition. For The National, CBC’s Karen Pauls breaks down what it would take to get more companies flying in Canada and why not everyone thinks it’s the right solution.
Letters: Air Monopsony
August 24, 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.
Monopsony at 20,000 FeetThis week, the union representing 10,000 flight attendants reached a tentative agreement with the Air Canada, securing wins on issues such as pay while flights are still on the tarmac and wage increase in the coming years. The deal avoids a strike that was set to continue even after the government forced flight attendants back to work, likely in response to pressure from Air Canada. While union leaders are clear that the deal represented a compromise, the saga was an important reminder of the power of labour as a counterweight to monopoly. It was also a reminder of the role that monopsony plays in the markets for the labour of Canadians. Whereas a monopoly refers to a single powerful seller of a good or service, monopsony is a situation where a dominant buyer holds the power. With a combined share of nearly 80%, Air Canada and WestJet form an effective duopoly in the market for Canadian air travel. But beyond their monopoly on air travel services, two carriers also function as monopsonists in the market for specialized labour like pilots, mechanics and flight attendants. Monopsony can be particularly problematic in labour markets, resulting in lower wages, unfair treatment, and restrictions on worker mobility. When competition policy recognizes the harms that monopsony can have on workers, it can be a powerful ally to labour law. It wasn’t always this way, but Canada’s competition policy has made recent pro-worker moves thanks to the pressure of organizations like CAMP. As of 2022, the Competition Act now explicitly prohibits wage-fixing and no-poaching agreements, and in 2024 the Competition Act was amended to include the effects on labour when analyzing a potentially harmful merger. The right for workers to strike will always be an important tool in balancing the power of employees and employers, but other policy areas like competition can be pointed in the same direction to ensure workers get a fair deal. Big Tech Funds Its Own FactsEarlier this month, a U.S. federal judge ordered Amazon to disclose its network of funding of academic and think tank research, research that could be relied on to determine critical antitrust cases. Every year companies like Amazon throw millions of dollars at researchers across a range of subjects. When these financial connections are disclosed, we can judge whether to believe its conclusions to be independent of funder interests. But when these connections are not disclosed, we can presume a false sense of objectivity for work with ulterior financial motivations. This is especially problematic when we have so many examples of Big Tech’s financial generosity coming with strings attached. Google’s influence on the prominent U.S. think tank New America resulted in the firing of researchers who criticized their monopoly. Meta has been accused of using financial and in-kind donations to influence the research agendas of universities. Canada is no exception. In 2023, the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law was forced to returned an undisclosed donation of $600,000 from Amazon that was intended to influence the competition policy conversation in Canada in the e-commerce giant’s favour. Enforcing competition law requires deep analysis of markets and complex industry dynamics, and judges depend research that can be secretly shaped by industry to guide their decisions. When the interests funding this research are not disclosed, we are unable to judge the effect of that funding on the outcomes of the work. This is one reason why CAMP discloses all donors above $5,000 on our About Us page. That the decision to force Amazon to disclose its research funding is a novel outcome shows us how far we have to go in understanding the reach of Big Tech’s influence. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
False Advertising: Meta Caught Lying to Advertisers, AgainThis week, a whistleblower formerly employed at Meta filed a complaint to a UK court alleging that the company promoted its Shop Ads program using deceptive practices, including counting taxes and shipping fees as revenue, inflating ad auction bids, and applying undisclosed discounts. The outcome? Advertisers were given an inflated picture of how their ads on the platform were performing. When parties misrepresent the value of advertising campaigns to advertisers, it’s called ad fraud. This kind of systematic misrepresentation is difficult to ferret out without whistleblowers because companies Meta are effectively checking their own homework. Meta has control over how results on their products are reported to advertisers, and subtle differences in how results are calculated may be invisible to advertisers. This is not the first time the company has been called out for inflating advertiser numbers, with the company settling a lawsuitover similar conduct related to Facebook videos in 2019. This is not just a Meta problem either. Google also ran afoul of is advertisers when Adalytics revealed its TrueView advertising service, which guaranteed high quality ad space on high quality “vetted partners,” was pushing those ads into bottom of the barrel advertising spaces. These include the unskippable, display-crowding, auto-playing schlock on websites generally unfit for human consumption. While advertisers are rightly frustrated by the opacity and deception of these platforms, where else will they go? Without cracking open the online ad monopoly, advertisers will continue to put up with this deceptive conduct so long as giants like Meta and Google are the only game in town. 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: Return on Investment
August 17, 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.
CAMP Urges Feds to Invest in the Competition BureauIt’s pre-budget season in Ottawa, and amid a major federal government spending review, departments are deciding how spending cuts will fall across the public service. Who and what is cut in the coming years will have a material impact on what the federal public service can deliver for Canadians. That’s why, in our submission to the government’s pre-budget consultation, CAMP is calling on the federal government to invest in, rather than cut, the Competition Bureau. The budget of the department in which the Bureau sits was just over $10 billion in 2024. Of that $10 billion, the Bureau accounts for less than 1% at just north of $70 million. This was money well spent, with estimates showing that the Bureau delivered $30 of savings for every $1 invested in the enforcer – over $2 billion in value every year. Those savings come from enforcement action in markets that matter to Canadians. As of today, the Bureau has ongoing investigations into anti-competitive conduct in groceries, gas, real estate, and a host of other markets. Pair these with the Bureau’s ongoing case against search giant Google and you’re talking about the future of competition in markets worth tens of billions of dollars annually. In 2023 and 2024 the government made important moves to strengthen Canada’s competition law. But these changes will be one step forward and two steps back if the government cuts the Bureau’s funding and asks the enforcer to do more with less. While flat cuts across the board offer senior administrators an easy way out of internal politics, the crucial work of the Competition Bureau merits more, not less resources. Its time to double down on protecting Canadians and invest in an empowered Competition Bureau. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰
Big Cloud’s Push to Own the FutureCloud computing has become the underlying infrastructure for much of our digital lives. Cloud servers store our information and run the digital products we use, with businesses and governments alike dependent on their services. Cloud computing centralizes control over our information- rather than storing things locally, they’re kept on massive remote data centres. It’s a way of computing that is incredibly expensive to set up and maintain and only works well at scale. Those economies of scale come with serious worries about the consolidation of economic power in and beyond the cloud market. Two thirds of the global cloud market is dominated by just three companies – Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. But new research out this month from Nathan Kim and David Gray shows that these companies, referred to as Big Cloud, are seeking to dominate not just the market for cloud computing, but adjacent technology markets as well. Investing in innovation isn’t bad, but Big Cloud’s strategy is about control. These firms use investment into companies and startup accelerators to ensure that new technologies are dependent on Big Cloud as both investors and service providers, shutting out competitors who don’t have a side business as major venture capital firms. The research is a reminder that we need to take a wider view when we think about control in markets or an economy. A narrow antitrust analysis would care only about dominance or investments in the market for cloud computing, but it’s clear that this dominance is being put to work in a broader ecosystem, not just a single market. If countries don’t move decisively to blunt this accumulation of economic power, Big Cloud will be setting the rules in markets far beyond cloud computing. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
Meta’s Reckless Handling of Children and ChatbotsWould you trust the makers of Facebook to babysit your kids? In the past two decades we’ve ceded more control of our lives to tech companies – how we get around, how we access information, and how we connect with one another. Unfortunately, this process seems poised to intensify with the integration of large language models and chatbots into the services we use every day. This is bad enough for adults, but the situation becomes even more fraught when kids get in the mix. As more young people engage with AI chatbots, they can enter unpredictable and unsupervised situations facilitated by corporations totally unaccountable for their consequences. This week, Reuters revealed internal Meta documents that show how while employees play whack-a-mole to prohibit egregious and dangerous prompts, young users can easily find their way into racist, violent and sexual conversations. This is not Meta’s first foray into social experimentation at scale. They’ve used their algorithms to spread “emotional contagions” that made users sadder, amplified divisive content, and conditioned users to seek dopamine hits through their platforms. When we refuse to regulate these platforms, we give up control of aspects of our lives, whether economic, social, or political. This task is frustrated by the power these companies have been able to accumulate, not just in their millions of lobbying dollars but also their ownership of key channels of communication. Meta puts up a good show when it reacts to publicity crises like these, but they can never treat the true cause: their business model. To change course requires two tall orders. We must break up the power that allows these companies to act with impunity and regulate the business models that makes putting dangerous chatbots in the hands of children profitable. 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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Submission | Pre-Budget Consultation in Advance of the 2025 Federal Budget
In its 2025 Pre-Budget Submission, the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project (CAMP) calls on the federal government to invest in the future of competition in Canada. With affordability still top of mind for Canadians, the 2025 budget is an opportunity to build up rather than cut back the efforts of the Competition Bureau to promote competition and improve the cost of living.
Recognizing the 30-to-1 return on funding dollars invested in the Competition Bureau, the federal government should commit to increasing the Bureau's annual funding by $25 million in the upcoming budget. Strong reforms of the Competition Act in 2023 and 2024 must be matched with appropriate resources to make the most of these important policy changes. Laws are only as good as their enforcement, and a well-resourced Competition Bureau is key to protecting competition and improving affordability for Canadians.
Read the full submission here.