With Few Discount Airlines, Canadian Travelers Face Steeper Fares
The New York Times
It’s unlikely that foreign carriers would be interested in serving the domestic routes that are most in need of competition — those that serve places other than the country’s major cities — because those are not as profitable, said Keldon Bester, the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project.
Cut fees that hamstring small carriers: Bester
BNN Bloomberg
Keldon Bester, executive director at Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss opening up Canadian air travel to competition.
Watchdog recommends foreign ownership of domestic airlines amid low competition
The Canadian Press
Canada should allow up to 100 per cent foreign ownership of domestic-only airlines in a bid to lower fares and boost flight options, the Competition Bureau says in a new report highlighting the country’s “highly concentrated” aviation industry.
Statement | Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project welcomes final report of Competition Bureau airline market study
June 19, 2025 [OTTAWA, ON] – The Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project (CAMP) welcomes today’s release of the Competition Bureau’s long-awaited final report on Canada’s airline market, confirming what Canadians already know: the airline industry and existing consumer protections are failing travellers.
“CAMP endorses the Bureau’s clear acknowledgement that Canada’s airline market is not delivering for Canadians,” said CAMP executive director Keldon Bester. “Successive federal governments have given the green light to harmful mergers and allowed passenger complaints to skyrocket without resolution. Canadians deserve better. The cozy duopoly that divides the country rather than competes for it needs immediate and meaningful government action.”
The report marks an important milestone as the first market study to occur under the Bureau’s new powers to compel information from companies instead of relying on insufficient voluntary disclosures by the very companies being studied.
CAMP is encouraged that the Bureau adopted several recommendations from its own submission to the study, including:
- Reducing the reliance on user fees biased against smaller players to fund the air travel system.
- Increasing the allowed level of foreign ownership of airlines from 25% to 49%.
- Publishing a wider range of public data on the air travel system.
Unfortunately, missing from the Bureau’s recommendations was a plan to improve competition for the rural and remote communities that need it most and a plan to ensure Canadian travelers have recourse when things go wrong.
To address those fundamental gaps, CAMP recommends the Government of Canada:
- Explore a regulatory model that provides routine, utility-like service to rural and remote communities that depend on air travel.
- Increase funding for the Canadian Transportation Agency to clear the existing complaint backlog and ensure timely resolutions going forward by streamlining the complaint process under the Air Passenger Protection Regulation (APPR).
- Avoid relaxation of restrictions on domestic operations of foreign carriers absent reciprocal relaxation or investment on the part of foreign air carriers, following the models of Australia and Chile.
Through meaningful reform and targeted investment that supports competition, the Government of Canada can transform Canada’s underperforming airline market into a critical component of its nation-building efforts connecting us from coast to coast to coast.
The other sovereignty threat
In the first week of Canada’s 2025 federal election campaign, both the Liberal and Conservative parties unveiled personal income tax cuts sold as providing relief to Canadians staring down the threat of both tariffs and economic annexation emanating from the White House.
Read the article here.
How Canada Can Up Its Game Against Monopolies
The Tyee
Antitrust advocate Keldon Bester on new watchdog laws, recharging competition, dismantling Big Tech and more.