'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."
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:
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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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