July 13, 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:

• Canada’s Competition Bureau dives into Amazon’s influence over the prices you pay online
• Lawyers pat themselves on the back for another merger at the expense of Canadian farmers
• Google takes its global PR push up north amid claims of “hot and heavy” competition

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Now let’s dive in.

Competition Bureau Advances Investigation into Amazon’s Alleged Abuse of Dominance

This week, the Competition Bureau announced it was moving forward with its investigation of Amazon’s conduct in online marketplaces, securing a court order to compel the e-commerce giant to produce documents related to the treatment of third-party sellers on its platform.

The Bureau’s investigation seeks to determine whether Amazon’s practices have led to higher fees for third-party sellers along with higher prices on both Amazon and other online shopping sites. The investigation parallels existing cases against the e-commerce giant in other jurisdictions, particularly those brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and California’s Attorney General.

The FTC’s case claims Amazon punishes sellers for offering lower prices on sites other than Amazon by “[burying] discounting sellers so far down in Amazon’s search results that they become effectively invisible.” It also alleges that Amazon conditions access to “Prime” eligibility on the use of its own fulfillment service, raising the proportion of seller revenue captured by Amazon. The Bureau is investigating whether the same conduct has been killing e-commerce competition in Canada.

As more shopping moves online, policy makers must pay attention to the companies that increasingly function more like infrastructure than individual companies. Given its scale, many businesses cannot afford to forgo access to Amazon’s platform, making them vulnerable to the kind of exploitation detailed in the FTC’s case. This is borne out by data on the growing share of seller revenue captured by Amazon, rising from 19% to 45% over the past decade.

As the rising cost of living continues to be a topline concern for Canadians, practices that strangle competition and eat into the margins on small businesses need to be addressed.

A Round of Applause for the Lawyers Making Life Harder for Farmers

A good rule of thumb is you should be worried anytime corporate lawyers are celebrating. After a multi-year wait, in early 2025 Canada’s Minister of Transport approved the purchase of grain handling company Viterra by global agri-business giant Bunge. This came despite a Competition Bureau investigation finding that the transaction would cost grain farmers nearly $20 million annually and a parallel study by University of Saskatchewan researchers that estimated annual harms in the hundreds of millions.

But last week brought a reminder that all clouds have silver linings as the Canadian law firm McMillan celebrated their Merger Control Matter of the Year win for shepherding the multi-billion dollar transaction through the required global regulatory processes. Behind every good merger is a team of lawyers charging up to four figures an hour to make sure the deal closes. Regardless of their consequences – shuttered stores, higher prices, waves of layoffs – a closed merger is a win for the corporate law community.

For decades, Canada had a competition law that catered to Bay Street’s appetite for consolidation. Mergers that monopolized Canadian markets at the expense of consumers and businesses were allowed in pursuit of the vaunted goal of efficiencies with no consideration of who, if anyone, might benefit from those efficiencies. While the game has changed after 2024’s “breathtaking” reform of Canada’s merger laws, the deck is still stacked against the average consumer, entrepreneur, or farmer.

While Bunge-Viterra slipped in under the door, the next major food system merger will be a test of whether Canada’s competition law is up to the task. Until farmers rather than corporate lawyers are celebrating, we’ve got work to do.

📚What We’re Reading📚

• Mendelsohn, Mark Carney's economic agenda misses something vital (Toronto Star)
• Sygutek, Canadians have the power to fight back against Big Tech (Financial Post)
• McKenna, A major defence contract is set to favour U.S. supplier, despite Carney's promise to diversify (CBC)

Google’s Top Lawyer Calls Competition “Hot and Heavy” in Canadian PR Push

Monopoly? What monopoly? This week, Google’s top lawyer Kent Walker told the host of the Public Policy Forum’s WONK podcast that he was optimistic about the outcome of Google’s many global antitrust challenges. Sidestepping the fact that Google has been declared a monopolist by U.S. judges not once but twice, Walker asserted that competition for the search giant was “hot and heavy,” going so far as to describe the current state of competition as “frothy and yeasty”.

Upsetting baking metaphors aside, the podcast should be seen as the first salvo in a building PR push for Canada to abandon its efforts to rein in the search giant. Beyond run-of-the-mill lobbying, Big Tech companies are extremely adept at shaping the policy discussion at home and abroad to their benefit. While it was all smiles on the podcast, we can look at Trump’s push to kill the Digital Services Tax (DST) as a preview of the kind of pressure Canada will face if we want a say over the behaviour of American tech giants.

While the dollar figures are lower than their American lobbying efforts, recent years have shown Big Tech more than willing to get creative with their shadowy efforts to influence Canadian policymaking. In 2023, the University of Toronto returned a previously undisclosed donation of $600,000 from Amazon amid faculty uproar that the shady donation gave the e-commerce giant influence over research and events related to Canadian competition policy. We need to take a page from the U of T faculty and stay vigilant to both hard and soft power efforts to bend Canadian laws in favour of Big Tech.

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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July 6, 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:

• A Canadian coalition urges the Carney government to cede no further ground to Big Tech interests
• A video game developer uses Canada’s recently reformed competition laws to push back against Google
• Anti-monopoly experts push for European independence from Big Tech

If you enjoy Letters, please considering sharing and supporting CAMP

Now let’s dive in.

Canadian Coalition Urges Government to Stand Up to Big Tech

In the ongoing trade tensions with the U.S., Canada appears to be on the back foot. Late Sunday evening, the Canadian government rescinded its Digital Services Tax (DST), two days after Donald Trump blamed the tax for derailing trade talks. While negotiations appear to have restarted, the retreat suggests that Canada’s present and future efforts to regulate Big Tech may be seen as bargaining chips in the back-and-forth with the Americans.

This week, CAMP, along with a group of Canadian unions, scholars, public servants, and civil society organizations, penned a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne urging an end to concessions to Big Tech and a commitment to Canada’s digital sovereignty. As the U.S. increasingly intrudes into the sovereignty of countries around the world, Canada’s leaders need to stand up for our right to regulate how critical platforms operate within our borders.

While the DST, a 3% tax on revenues earned from Canadian users, was just one regulatory lever, its abandonment could be the prelude to concessions in other important policy areas such as competition, privacy, and data sovereignty. As readers of Letters know, the Competition Bureau is currently engaged in an important competition lawsuit against Google’s monopoly over Canada’s multi-billion dollar online advertising market. Should Donald Trump decide that the Bureau is treating an American company very unfairly, we should expect similar threats to derail the enforcement effort. Doing so would not only undermine Canada’s rule of law but also create an unfair advantage for major U.S. firms who can bend the President’s ear.

Recognizing the complexity of ongoing negotiations, Canadians need reassurance that their sovereignty isn’t being traded away. The effort to push back against Big Tech crosses multiple policy areas – competition, privacy, public safety – and we need to be able to enforce these policies to protect the interests of Canadians. In 2025, Canada is now all too familiar with the need to insulate ourselves from our overreliance on the U.S. and Big Tech. A strong stance against further concessions is the first step in this process.

📰CAMP in the News📰

• Patel and Ren, Mark Carney receives praise, blowback after he ‘caved’ to Donald Trump’s demand to scrap tech tax (Toronto Star)

Game Developer Puts Competition Law to Work Against Google’s Search Monopoly

One of the most exciting reforms to Canada’s Competition Act was the opening up of private access to the Competition Tribunal. But what exactly is private access? In short, it’s the ability for a company, group of companies, or civil society organization to bring a case against a monopolist, rather than waiting around for the Competition Bureau to act.

This week, we saw one of the first major cases test the waters of the new private access system. Brought by video game developer Alexander Martin, the case focuses on Google’s search revenue share agreements with Apple, the core of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) successful case against the search giant, and their effect on competition in the online search market.

The suit argues that Google controls a substantial amount of the online search market (over 90%) and has secured that position with anticompetitive agreements with Apple since 2002. These agreements make Google the default search engine on iPhones and ensure Apple has a $20 billion annual incentive not to develop a competing product. Martin relies on internet searches by potential buyers to find his games, and his living depends on optimizing his marketing and content for Google search without competing alternatives. Martin’s case is important because his situation is not unique. Businesses across the country must conform to the norms set by Google and other technology firms that enjoy the rulemaking power that market dominance brings.

While the launch of the suit is an encouraging first step, the real test is now whether the Competition Tribunal decides to hear the case. Private access to competition law has generated landmark cases in countries like the U.S. and Canada is long overdue for its own regime. CAMP will be watching closely as this case and others start to give independent businesses another tool to push back against monopolies.

📚What We’re Reading📚

• Fauteux, Should global media giants shape our cultural and media policy? Lessons from satellite radio(The Conversation)
• Bergen, ‘Build, baby, build’ must include Canada’s key digital infrastructure — not just roads, ports and pipelines (Toronto Star)
• ​Proton joins suit against Apple for predatory practices that harm developers and consumers (Proton)

Big Tech’s Sovereignty Threat Goes Global

Canada is not the only country facing sovereignty threats from U.S. Big Tech. High on the list of American demands for the European Union in trade negotiations is backing down on the bloc’s regulation of dominant digital platforms, including the landmark Digital Markets Act (DMA). Writing for Politico this week, Open Markets’ Cori Crider and technologist Robin Berjon call for the EU to stand firm in its defense of its citizens.

Big Tech is working overtime because every day Europeans and Canadians agree that these platforms need stronger regulations. The need for regulation is even understood in the United States, where a ban against state regulation of AI was recently defeated as part of Trump’s recent legislative efforts. In countries around the world, including their own, Big Tech is trying tie the hands of regulators against the wishes of the public.

In their piece, Crider and Berjon point to the need for alternatives to Big Tech infrastructure, including building energy for an independent Eurostack. As a like-minded ally looking to insulate ourselves from Big Tech’s sovereignty threat, Canada should support efforts to create these alternatives. By diversifying key digital markets, Canada can begin to create an economy resilient to the kind of country-to-country bullying we see today. As our government tries to deepen its trade relations with the EU, digital sovereignty and technology partnerships should be at the top of the list.

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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