Letters: Gatekeeper Crisis
June 15, 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:
Now let’s dive in.
CAMP Discussion Paper: Confronting Canada’s Gatekeeper CrisisAmid a worsening relationship with the United States, several assumptions about the Canadian economy taken for granted for decades are now in need of reassessment. The situation is particularly urgent in key digital markets where a handful of American firms dominate. Exploring this topic, this week CAMP released a new discussion paper: Confronting Canada’s Gatekeeper Crisis, advancing our study of the risk that American tech dominance poses for Canada’s economic and national security. Scanning three markets critical to the present and future of the modern economy - online advertising, cloud computing infrastructure, and artificial intelligence (AI) – we see a recurring pattern of monopolization by American giants. But yesterday’s monopoly problem is now compounded with the increasingly likely risk that this monopolization becomes a point of leverage in Canada’s interactions with the U.S. government. Online advertising is effectively a duopoly market split between Google and Meta, with systems that create huge aftermarkets for personal data, with implications for personal privacy and national security. Cloud computing infrastructure is the base of our digitized, service economy, and if you operate a business or even a government department you’re likely relying on either Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. Our economy depends on their continued availability and if the use of this infrastructure is leveraged against Canada, we’ll have few places to turn. While still an emerging field, AI products from companies like OpenAI already shows the potential to shape Canadians access to information in ways that benefit its owners rather than its users. How we access information, connect with one another, and do business in Canada is increasingly mediated by a handful of gatekeepers headquartered outside our borders. For decades, we assumed we had a stable ally and that this integration would benefit our economy and society. Now Canadians must consider a world where these assumptions no longer hold. 📰CAMP in the News📰
Competition Bureau Sues DoorDash for Deceptive Drip PricingHave you ever been annoyed to find out that the $10 breakfast sandwich you ordered to your door somehow ended up costing you $30? This week, Canada’s Competition Bureau filed a lawsuit against food delivery company Doordash, alleging that the company’s slow rolling and potential misrepresenting of fees amounts to a deceptive marketing practise. “Drip-pricing” is the practice of adding fees throughout the purchase process so that customers end up paying more than the price they were advertised. DoorDash has a laundry list of these: delivery fees, surge pricing, extended range fees, small order fees, and “regulatory response fees.” The Bureau argues DoorDash should present customers with the true cost of items when they decide to buy them. What fees they charge is the company’s business, but those costs should be transparent and given up front. DoorDash has already run into problems misleading customers about the fees they charge and where that money goes. In February, the New York attorney general’s office settled a $17 Million lawsuit against DoorDash for pocketing the tips given to drivers and using them to offset their base pay. Both cases highlight the potential for manipulation when pricing decisions are offloaded to algorithms that are opaque to both customers and employees, something the Bureau is currently consulting the public on. The Bureau case is an important defense of transparent pricing and fair competition. When companies are allowed to compete on prices they can’t offer, companies that are up front with customers are put at a competitive disadvantage. While the Bureau’s case may not make your next breakfast sandwich cheaper, it will lessen the shock when you happen to check the receipt. 📚What We’re Reading📚
Big Banks to Blame for Banal Business ClimateWhen you think of innovation and dynamism, the last thing that comes to mind is one of Canada’s big banks, and that may be dragging down our economy. In a new piece this week for the Globe and Mail, Professor J. Ari Pandes and Senator Colin Deacon explore the role of Canada’s Big Six banks in Canada’s stagnant commercial landscape. Holding most of Canada’s money, these banks control over 90% of Canada’s banking, and are an important source of capital for new and growing companies, whether through corporate loans or underwriting companies going public. The authors argue that the conservatism of these giants has led them to neglect emerging technology companies, creating hurdles for firms to seek capital or go public with an IPO. When you’re already on top, why bother with the risk? It is a lot easier to make profits by charging high fees for middling service and underwriting mortgages. If we want to hold our own against the United States and forge new trading relationships across the world, we’ll need strong firms creating new and innovative products and services. This means having entrepreneurial institutions that are willing to take on the risk of helping these firms grow. Whether for lower fees, better service, or more active capital markets, CAMP has been pushing for a more competitive banking sector since our founding. With Prime Minister Carney’s central bank background and experience with FinTech firms like Stripe, Canada is well positioned to break out of this pattern of stagnation. 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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Discussion Paper | Confronting Canada's Gatekeeper Crisis
June 12, 2025 - Canada’s relationship with the United States has been upended. The opening months of the second Trump administration have brought tariffs, threats to unravel national security partnerships, and a fixation on the potential of Canada as the 51st state. At the same time, the largest American technology firms are forging closer ties to the new administration and tightening their grip on global digital markets.
These twin shifts mean the companies that mediate how Canadians communicate, understand the world around us, and engage in commerce can no longer be treated as benign commercial partners. Across tariff negotiation, censorship worries, and our future as an independent nation, Canada’s dependence on the infrastructure of U.S. tech companies is now a point of strategic vulnerability.
In a new discussion paper, CAMP provides an overview of the consolidated landscape in three key areas of digital infrastructure - online advertising, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence - and poses four questions to begin charting a new course towards durable digital sovereignty:
- How can Canada guarantee reliable, sovereign access to critical digital infrastructure, when that infrastructure is currently the domain of a tight oligopoly of American firms?
- What new or strengthened policy tools are needed to rein in the power of digital gatekeepers, and how can Canada ensure those policies have teeth?
- What mix of public investment, industrial policy, and procurement strategy is needed to foster domestic or allied alternatives to American platforms in important digital markets?
- How should Canada collaborate with like-minded countries to resist pressure to weaken regulation of digital gatekeepers and present a united front on shared policy goals?
Read the full discussion paper here
Competition Bureau sues food delivery company DoorDash, alleging misleading price promotions
CBC
As for why the Competition Bureau would target DoorDash but not its rivals, Bester said that competition laws are often used to make an example of one company to deter the rest of the market from engaging in similar behaviour.
The goal is that if the bureau is successful, “other companies with similar practices… they’ll see this and change their ways or face consequences in the future.”
Canada’s Competition Bureau Sues DoorDash Over Alleged Hidden Fees
Competition Policy International
Canada’s federal Competition Bureau has launched legal action against food delivery giant DoorDash, alleging the company engaged in misleading pricing practices that deceived consumers. The case centers on the company’s use of what regulators describe as “drip pricing,” where additional mandatory fees are only revealed at the final stage of checkout.
Letters: Constitutional Clash
June 8, 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 installment we have:
Now let’s dive in.
Competition Bureau Moves to Strike Down Google’s Constitutional ComplaintThe 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 📰
Competition Bureau Issues Guidance on Competition-Killing Property ControlsThis 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 📚
Pushing Back on Monopoly Power in the AI LandscapeThe 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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Canada's competition watchdog publishes final greenwashing guidelines
Canada’s National Observer
Businesses can make environmental claims — only if they aren’t false or misleading and have been properly substantiated, according to new Canadian anti-greenwashing guidelines.