January 12, 2024

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:

• CBC investigation uncovers major grocers consistently deceiving customers on product weight
• Survey finds that Canada’s largest voting bloc supports public interest regulation of business
• Meta’s fact checking 180 shows the need for anti-monopoly internet policy

Now let’s dive in.

Canadian Grocers Torch Trust by Underweighting Products

By now we’re betting that every reader of this newsletter has experienced comparing the cost of groceries, often using standardized pricing by weight to understand which product is the best deal. But what if those weights were wrong, and consistently wrong at the expense of shoppers?

That’s what the CBC discovered when the results of an investigation showed that products in the grocery store consistently weigh less than the label claims. That means Canada’s largest grocery chains—Loblaw, Sobeys, and Walmart—have been selling underweighted meat, potentially pocketing millions in extra profit at consumers’ expense.

How does it work? According to federal regulations, the net weight of packaged food must exclude packaging materials, ensuring you get what you pay for. Yet in cases uncovered by the CBC, meat was weighed alongside plastic trays or incorrectly labeled, shorting customers by up to 11% per item. Loblaw admitted to selling mislabeled meat across 80 stores due to a “packaging error,” but assured reporters that this was an isolated incident. But what good do these corporate-speak responses do for Canadians? Months after Loblaw claimed to have fixed the issue, CBC still found mislabeled meat at multiple locations.

This kind of shortchanging of customers is the absolute baseline for consumer protection regulation. To ensure a stop is put to these widespread “isolated” incidents, the Competition Bureau must act decisively and launch deceptive marketing investigations against the major grocers weighting practices. As Canadians continue to struggle under the weight of food inflation, every gram counts.

Public Interest Regulation Cuts Across Cultural Lines in Canada

At CAMP, we are constantly curious about what different groups of Canadians think about monopoly, and a recent survey has shed some encouraging light on the topic. Conducted by Abacus Data, the wide-ranging survey canvassed a wide swath of Canadians and attempts to sort them ideologically across progressive and conservative lines on the categories of economic and cultural issues. The most interesting finding from our perspective? That support for public interest regulation is shared by cultural conservatives and progressives in Canada, the largest voting bloc responding to the survey.

Of these 41% of Canadians, the vast majority of them agree with the statement “government regulation of business is necessary to protect the public interest.” The next largest group, the 32% of Canadians that consider themselves economically and culturally mixed, also understand the need for government intervention but are less decisive about their support. While less than half of the 23% of Canadians that consider themselves economic conservatives agree with the same statement, it’s hard to imagine that hesitance extends to regulations that ensure Canadians actually get what they pay for at the grocery checkout.

Support for regulation across cultural divides parallels the cross-parliament support for stronger competition laws that saw all parties vote in favour of strengthening the Competition Act in 2023 and again in 2024. At the risk of confirming our own bias, as issues emerge as hinge points for an upcoming election, one thing Canadians of different stripes appear to agree on is the need for a strong stance for the public interest and against the monopolies that dominate our economy.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Goose Media, Can We Solve Canada’s Monopoly Problem? (YouTube)
• Claire Kelloway, America needs a real challenger to corporate greed, not conspiracy-riddled RFK Jr. (The Hill)
• Ben Casselman, Economists Are in the Wilderness. Can They Find a Way Back to Influence? (New York Times)

Zuckerberg’s Fact-Check Flip: Why Anti-Monopoly is the Surest Path to a Healthy Internet

This week, Meta announced it is scrapping its third fact-checking program in favor of a crowdsourced “community notes” system much like the one in place on the Elon Musk-owned X platform, formerly Twitter. CEO Mark Zuckerberg framed the move as restoring free expression to the platform, but critics argue that the move, along with the elevation of executive Joel Kaplan and appointing of UFC CEO Dana White to Meta’s board, is a nod to appease the incoming Trump administration nod.

These fact-checking programs were never a silver bullet for the thorny issue of balancing online safety with free expression, but the 180 reminds us why an anti-monopoly approach to online platforms is so important. As FTC Chair Lina Khan aptly noted in her exit interview with CNBC, “an economy where decisions by a single executive dictate speech rules is at odds with competition laws,” and we might add to the idea of a free and democratic society.

Meta’s history of suppressing content post-January 6 before abruptly shifting policies to curry favor with changing political winds underscores the dangers of centralized power in the global economy. This isn’t about free expression; it’s about control—control of information, markets, and political influence. While one political faction may see this change as a win today, it was not their choice to make, and powerful companies will continue to morph to fit those they wish to curry favour with. A truly democratic society means breaking the concentrated power of individual companies and returning it to the citizens themselves.

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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December 22, 2024

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 looks back on a packed year of anti-monopoly activity at the Competition Bureau
• Canadian corporate lawyers’ Christmas wish for courts to ignore the will of elected lawmakers
• Historic U.S. DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter gives a powerful farewell address

As we close out 2024, CAMP remains committed to the fight against monopoly and for the good of everyday Canadians. Letters from CAMP will be off next week but we wish you a happy holiday and look forward to seeing you in the new year.

Now let’s dive in.

The End of the Beginning: Looking Back on the First Year of a New Era in Competition Policy

2024 marked a transformative year in Canadian competition policy, with major reforms to Canada’s previously pro-monopoly laws coming into effect on the back of unanimous support from federal lawmakers. But laws are only as good as their enforcement, and expectations are high for the Competition Bureau to deliver results for Canadians.

Thankfully, there are early signs that the Competition Bureau is meeting the moment. Closing out the year, CAMP has put together a factsheet summarizing all of the major competition law and policy activity coming out of our federal competition cop, and it’s a long list.

Among the year’s major milestones: investigations into the country’s largest grocers, Loblaw and Sobeys, for property controls limiting grocery competition, and an inquiry into whether software company Kalibrate’s gas pricing tools are enabling collusion at the pump. The Bureau also launched a landmark lawsuit against Google for abusing its dominance in online advertising, a $15 billion market that allows businesses across the country to connect with their customers. These cases underscore a significant shift in the focus of the enforcer, who eight years ago was going to the mat for competition in in-flight meals out of the Vancouver airport.

Beyond just investigations, the Bureau also scored high-profile wins for consumers, with Cineplex paying a $39 million fine for deceiving customers over ticket pricing online. Though 2024 lacked a major merger challenge, the Bureau came out publicly against the merger of agribusiness giants Viterra and Bunge, a deal that will raise costs for Canadian farmers and is still waiting for a final decision from the Minister of Transport.

On the advocacy front, the Bureau pushed for open banking, the right to repair, and against preferred provider networks that allow insurance companies to limit where consumers can access needed medications. The Bureau also opened the first market study under its new information gathering powers into competition in Canada’s duopoly airline market (you can read CAMP’s submission to that market study here).

With major legislative reforms behind it, it’s clear that the Bureau’s focus is shifting from building capacity to delivering results. While this progress is encouraging, much remains to be done. This new era of competition enforcement comes at a critical moment, with inflation and economic concentration squeezing households and businesses alike. CAMP will continue to hold the Bureau accountable, ensuring it doesn’t falter under pressure from big business and their cheerleaders.

2025 is on the horizon, and while the momentum is undeniable, so too are the stakes. Echoing the words of Canada’s Commissioner of Competition, “buckle up.”

📰 CAMP in the News 📰

• The Current, Is Canada just three companies in a trench coat? (CBC)

A Corporate Christmas Wish for More Merger Mania

As Canada’s competition laws have been strengthened, corporate pushback is emerging as an inevitable counterweight. The frontline of this is and always has been those who profit from lax antitrust laws: corporate lawyers. Especially prosaic commentary this week from law firm Stikeman Elliott is a perfect example. The piece calls recent reforms an overreach and portrays the Bureau as an overzealous regulator wielding unchecked power, along with references to Martin Luther, medieval plagues, and high priests. Even lawyers get to have a little fun every once and awhile it seems.

The article highlights the tension between Canada’s M&A hungry corporate law community and the interests of everyday Canadians and their elected lawmakers who have moved decisively to empower Canada’s Competition Bureau. Corporate lawyers need mergers to keep the bill rates high and Canadians need competition laws to protect us from the neverending waves of consolidation cooked up in corporate boardrooms.

While the prose is flowery, the underlying message of the piece is a dangerous one: the Competition Tribunal, Canada’s competition court led by three federal judges, should be a bulwark against the democratic forces pushing for stronger competition law. Having lost the battle to convince lawmakers, corporate lawyers are willing to put the courts on a crash course with the will of Parliament to keep deals flowing.

CAMP welcomes these views as both a sign of progress as well as a clear statement of the intentions of Canada’s corporate law community. When the handmaidens of monopoly start calling for the referee, it means the game is getting fairer. But this kind of pushback cannot be shrugged off. While this is just one article, it rests on the shoulders of an army of six figure incomes looking to kneecap Canada’s competition law in 2025.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• William J. McGee and Helaine Olen, Predatory Pricing in Airlines: How Southwest Lowered Prices to Squeeze Out Competition in Hawaii (AELP)
• Leah Nylen, Biden DOJ chief leaves record number of monopoly cases for Trump DOJ (Bloomberg)
• Egan Ward, Tyson foods suing to muzzle journalists investigating harmful practices (Investigate Midwest)

Trailblazing U.S. DOJ Antitrust Chief Jonathan Kanter Bids Farewell

We’re not crying, you’re crying. In his farewell address this week, U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Jonathan Kanter delivered a powerful reminder of why we care about competition policy. A dedicated and experienced attorney, Kanter’s speech sends a strong message that antitrust is not about abstract market theories, but about improving the lives of real people. Recounting stories from rural communities struggling under corporate concentration and monopolistic practices, Kanter reminds us that the real constituency of competition policy is not lawyers and economists but every worker, producer, and consumer in our economy.

It is impossible to overstate the achievements during Kanter’s three year tenure. Under Kanter’s leadership, the DOJ achieved historic victories, from tackling Big Tech monopolies like Google, protecting authors and readers from further consolidation in the book market, to going after price gougers in the grocery space. But Kanter’s speech is not an exercise in resting on his laurels. Kanter frames antitrust as a cornerstone of democracy, calling corporate concentration a modern-day form of tyranny that stifles freedom and opportunity. Kanter reminds us that the Sherman Act in the U.S. was designed not just to lower prices but to prevent “a king over the necessaries of life.”

Kanter’s tenure helped revitalize the “why” behind antitrust, showing how enforcement can dismantle barriers to innovation, protect workers, and restore hope in the American dream. But Americans should not have a monopoly on that vision. In Canada, similar challenges demand a people-centered approach to competition policy, and similar rewards are within our reach. The team at CAMP is sad to see Kanter go, but the example he set of antitrust for real people is just getting started.

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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