June 8, 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 installment we have:

• A salvo against Google's complaint that Canada's competition laws are unconstitutional
• Competition Bureau stands firm on property controls that limit brick and mortar competition
• AI Now Institute releases landmark report on the state of power in the AI landscape​

Now let’s dive in.

Competition Bureau Moves to Strike Down Google’s Constitutional Complaint

The Competition Bureau's high-profile case against Google's advertising monopoly is ratcheting up. Last month, Google's lawyers filed a constitutional challenge, arguing that a monetary penalty up to 3% of the company’s worldwide revenues would be disproportionate to the size of their business in Canada, and an extraordinary penalty. This week, the Bureau has asked that the challenge be thrown out, because a monetary penalty has yet to be proposed by the Competition Tribunal, Canada’s competition court.

The legal back and forth is over an important piece of Canada’s reformed competition law. Before reforms, monetary penalties were capped at a rounding error for even medium-sized companies, resulting in a $9 million fine levied on Facebook in 2020, roughly an hour of the firm’s revenue at the time. While fines are no substitute for structural remedies like breakups, meaningful fines are an important deterrent against monopolistic behaviour.

At the heart of the case is the Competition Bureau's desire to separate two important parts of Google's advertising monopoly. By controlling both the platform for bringing ad space to market and the marketplace itself, the Bureau argues that Google has prevented innovation in the advertising market and distorted market prices in its favour. This year, a U.S. federal judge found Google's conduct in the advertising market in violation of antitrust laws, and the Department of Justice has proposed remedies including opening ad exchange bidding to third-party applications, spinning off parts of Google’s ad business, and otherwise curbing its anticompetitive practices.

As Google feels competition policy pressure on all sides, its dominance in the market that makes up the lifeblood of much of the internet looks more uncertain than ever. CAMP looks forward to the Bureau keeping up the good fight, and to the Competition Tribunal seeing through Google’s premature protesting.

📰 CAMP in the News 📰

• Bulowski, Canada’s competition watchdog publishes final greenwashing guidelines (National Observer)

Competition Bureau Issues Guidance on Competition-Killing Property Controls

This week, the Competition Bureau released updated guidance on how it will use its new powers to protect Canadians against anti-competitive property controls. Property controls restrict the allowed uses of a property, either as a clause in a commercial lease, or as a condition of the sale of land.

These kinds of controls come in a few flavours, with exclusivity clauses and restrictive covenants being the most common. Exclusivity clauses can forbid landlords from leasing their properties to competitors of existing tenants, limit the kinds of businesses that can operate in a landlord’s properties, and even dictate what products those businesses can sell. Restrictive covenants constrain the buyer of a property in how that buyer can use that property in the future.

CAMP is glad to see that the Bureau’s updated guidance does not back down on the firm stance the enforcer put forward in draft guidance last year. As detailed in the Bureau’s ongoing investigation into the use of these controls in the grocery sector, the restrictions have been used by major grocers to ensure that they are the only store allowed to operate in a given area. Exacerbating the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, these practices limit shoppers’ options for stores, products, and prices across the country.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Lynn, Resurrecting the Rebel Alliance (Washington Monthly)
• Streitfeld, What if Google Just Broke Itself Up? A Tech Insider Makes the Case (The New York Times)
• Lockhart, Survey of Online Harms in Canada 2025 (The Dais)

Pushing Back on Monopoly Power in the AI Landscape

The AI Now Institute has released its 2025 Landscape Report, offering a sober analysis of the state of power in Artificial Intelligence (AI). The authors make clear that the current AI policy debate should be about “power, not progress,” arguing that when we focus our analysis and complaints on AI technologies themselves, we miss the larger problem: who controls those technologies and their agendas.

No shock to Letters readers, power in AI remains consolidated in the hands of a few large and familiar tech companies that control the infrastructure, data, and intellectual property that drives AI development. It’s this kind of power that we need to reckon with if we want to realize the potential benefits of AI without accepting an unprecedented level of economic and social control by these same corporations.

The authors of the report remind us that the trade-offs we have been presented are not set in stone. We don't need to accept intensive and pervasive workplace surveillance if we want to automate the most boring parts of our work, just like we don't need to give up our ability to write and create art for scientists to be able to fold proteins and discover new medical treatments faster. AI Now’s report reiterates the call for solidarity and action, in our workplaces and democracies, to make sure AI is not used “on us, but by us”. Technologies can be made in ways that serve people- we don't need to accept a future where AI makes people serve power.

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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June 1, 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 installment we have:

• CAMP contributes to European efforts to protect democracies from platform power
• A 70 year old loophole allowing corporations to create pharmacy empires in Ontario
• The Irish Council for Civil Liberties launches a landmark lawsuit against Microsoft

Now let’s dive in.

Platforms vs Democracy: CAMP Weighs In on Europe’s Democracy Shield

The C in CAMP is there for a reason. Canada has its own monopoly problems and cannot depend on others to solve them. But many of these problems are shared by countries around the world, especially when it comes to the global power of Big Tech.

This week, CAMP submitted comments to the European Commission’s (EC) consultation on its European Democracy Shield initiative. The initiative is a welcome effort to bolster democratic resilience in the face of unprecedented geopolitical instability and global concentrations of economic and political power.

In its submission, CAMP calls for bold, structural reforms to rein in the monopoly platforms that shape our information and democratic discourse. It emphasizes that incremental tweaks won’t suffice – what’s needed are strong antitrust measures (up to and including break-ups of dominant firms) and new forms of democratic oversight of tech giants. The submission also stresses the need for greater cooperation and collaboration between dependable allies amid rising threats to the sovereignty of individual nations.

CAMP praises Europe’s recent steps, from aggressive enforcement to landmark laws like the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, and urges EU officials to maintain their leadership in challenging Big Tech power. Only by dismantling Big Tech’s dominance and establishing robust public oversight can we rebuild an online infrastructure that serves rather than undermines democracy.

CAMP’s message to Brussels is the same as our message to Ottawa: we must curb platform monopolies to safeguard both our economy and our democracy.

Loophole Allows Corporate Chains to Own Ontario Pharmacies

Who owns your local pharmacy? In Ontario, chances are it’s part of a corporate chain despite provincial rules meant to keep pharmacies in the hands of licensed pharmacists. The Globe and Mail reports that to open a pharmacy in Ontario, you either must be a pharmacist, or have about $2 million on hand to exploit a loophole.

The loophole dates back to 1954, when Ontario passed a law requiring pharmacies to be majority-owned by pharmacists. However, any corporation already operating a pharmacy on May 14, 1954 was grandfathered in under the law. This exemption created a small club of legacy pharmacy companies and, unintentionally, a gray market for their licenses.

Today, investors can buy one of these pre-1954 pharmacy charters, at prices now north of $2 million, to acquire the legal authority to own pharmacies without being pharmacists. Critics, which include many pharmacists, are calling for reforms to close this loophole. The current situation, they argue, defeats the spirit of the law and puts business interests ahead of patients.

Keeping the loophole open means allowing Ontario’s pharmacy market to further consolidate in corporate hands. To maintain trust in pharmacy services, Ontario must finally shut the door on this 71-year-old loophole.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Cramer, Canada Is a Regionless Country in the Internet Governance World, (CIGI)
• ​GrainFox and AgResource announce proposed merger, (RealAgriculture)
• Musharbash, Messing With Texas: How Big Homebuilders and Private Equity Made American Cities Unaffordable (Big Newsletter)

Irish Privacy Watchdog Takes Aim at Microsoft’s Ad Machine

In a first-of-its-kind move for Ireland, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) is applying to the High Court to launch a class action lawsuit against Microsoft’s online advertising business. The case targets Microsoft’s use of “Real-Time Bidding” (RTB), the behind-the-scenes auction system that matches ads to individuals by broadcasting their personal data to countless advertisers.

ICCL alleges this system amounts to a massive, ongoing data breach, violating EU data protection law. Longtime privacy and anti-monopoly crusader Dr. Johnny Ryan, who leads ICCL’s Enforce project, explains that very sensitive personal data, individuals’ relationships, health, finances, even whether someone works in a national security role, are routinely broadcast into what he calls a “black hole” of ad targeting. Ryan likens the system to an ongoing “huge data breach” exposing millions of people’s private details.

ICCL’s challenge spotlights the wider risks of data monopolies and surveillance-driven advertising. A handful of tech firms have unparalleled access to personal data and influence over what information people see. This concentration of data creates barriers to competition while eroding consumer privacy and democratic values. CAMP applauds ICCL’s landmark effort to put a stop to this practice.

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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