Private assets, public risk
Published in The Globe and Mail
Ontario’s securities market regulator has faced pressure from Premier Doug Ford’s government to authorize a new class of mutual funds aimed at retail investors that can hold higher-risk private assets such as real estate. Featuring perspectives from CAMP fellow, Rachel Wasserman.
World of Scams: The Fraud Problem at the Heart of Online Advertising
The proliferation of online scams are a global problem with Canadian consequences. In recent years, scams ranging from pyramid schemes, sham investments, and long-running confidence games have fleeced Canadians to the tune of over $650 million. These costs balloon further when we consider ad fraud, the misrepresenting of low quality advertising supply, and its ability to cheat businesses out of their legitimate advertising dollars. Facilitating this tidal wave of scams is an oligopoly online advertising market that creates highly detailed profiles of consumers, obscures the identities of advertisers, and turns a blind eye to revenue earned through fraudulent ads.
In a new report, CAMP lays out the harms to consumers and businesses from this growing world of scams, successful regulatory interventions from peer jurisdictions, and what Canada can do to better protect our citizens. Stemming the tide of scams means changing the incentives that make their proliferation profitable. To set a course for safer internet for Canadian consumers and businesses, policymakers should:
- Strengthen data protection laws, restricting the creation, collection, and use of sensitive information for advertising purposes
- Require know-your-customer and advertiser verification and reporting, giving researchers and companies the tools to understand the market and keep competition fair
- Develop anti-scam regulations outlining the responsibilities of large advertising platforms, including transparency requirements, and obligations to prevent, detect, and remove fraudulent content
- Empower regulators the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and law enforcement agencies like the Competition Bureau to ensure compliance with anti-scam laws
Letters: Band-Aids
February 1, 2026Welcome 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:
If you enjoy Letters, please considering sharing and supporting CAMP. Now let’s dive in.
Only Competition Policy Can Deliver Lasting Change to Canada’s Food SystemThis week, the Prime Minister announced a package of new measures to address rising food prices and food insecurity affecting Canadians across the country, with a headline expansion of the GST credit for lower-income Canadians. Support for those struggling is a welcome development, but the policies will do little to change the markets that produce the high prices Canadians are unhappy with. While the announcement included a commitment to “support the work” of the Competition Bureau, there was no detail on what that support entailed in the wake of recent cuts to the agency. One fan of the announcement? The CEO of Canada’s third largest grocery chain. The policy package is a reminder of the tension between policy changes that redistribute the spoils from markets and those that change how they are generated in the first place. An accurate knock against competition policy is that its benefits develop over time. More competition doesn’t bring down prices overnight and the path isn’t always linear, as Canadians have seen lately in wireless prices. But without changes to competition in underlying markets, we’ll find ourselves putting another band-aid on a persistent issue soon enough. Consolidation is at the heart of Canada’s food system, with powerful middlemen squeezing producers and consumers alike. We need to break these markets open and ensure monopolists share the burden of rising costs rather than passing them on. We also need to consider novel uses of existing policy tools in our food system. Canada’s supply management system gives us a say over key staples and could be used to steady or reduce rising prices. Both approaches would be departures from the status quo and provoke serious opposition, but this focus on markets is the only way we can achieve lasting change. You’ll never be able to cut a ribbon for more competition, but anti-monopoly investments today will pay off for generations. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰
Who Guides the GuidelinesThis week, CAMP submitted our response the Competition Bureau’s consultation on the proposed Anti-Competitive Conduct and Agreements Enforcement Guidelines. Other than a mouthful, what are enforcement guidelines? Enforcement guidelines are a public reference for businesses to understand how the Bureau will enforce the Competition Act. Not sure if something a business is doing is offside? Check the guidelines. When they work well, they reflect to the public the approach the Bureau will take to protecting and promoting competition. While the Bureau has made efforts to put the guidelines in plain English, they’re still deeply technical documents. But that’s what CAMP is here for. The good news? The guidelines describe a conduct-first approach that considers all the tools available for stopping anti-competitive conduct. They also suggest the Bureau will make greater use of interim or temporary orders that halt potentially problematic conduct while the agency investigates or litigates, speeding up relief for businesses and consumers. Finally, they detail how the agency can tackle serial acquisitions, a series of small acquisitions that can roll up markets behind our backs. While CAMP welcomes the Bureau’s new course, there’s still room for improvement. While the guidelines note that a company with a 30% market share could hold market power, they continue to consider a firm “dominant” only when it holds around 50% of a market. We know that a company with far less than half of a market can still engage in anti-competitive conduct. While there’s more to competition than market shares, in finalizing the guidelines the Bureau should be clear that problematic conduct well below the proposed threshold can still fall within its reach. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
Searching for FairnessThis week, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) proposed measures that could change the balance of power between Google and online publishers as the giant increasingly incorporates AI into its search product. Following the CMA proposal, British publishers will be able to opt out of AI summaries and training, and Google chatbots will be obligated to clearly cite the sources for their results. Google will also be responsible for demonstrating to the CMA its rankings and summaries are fair, particularly important as sponsored content and AI summaries collide. The action is an important step to reclaim agency over how many Britons access information online. With the company responsible for 90% of internet searches in the UK, Google can set terms for publishers while lowering the quality of its results to drive ad revenues. As a ubiquitous internet middleman Google has subverted the business models for news media and changed the way that web pages are designed to serve the search giant’s interests. Users and businesses were forced to take the deal they were offered and for years regulators seemed were unwilling to intervene. This regulatory win was made possible because of recent moves by the British government to have a greater say over competition in digital markets. By designating Google search as having “strategic market status” (SMS) under their Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, the CMA has a more direct path to rebalancing competition in the market. While the CMA must still consult on the proposal, the move has already spurred Google to proactively increase publisher control over AI search features. By creating a new avenue to recognize dominance and empower regulators to address it, the CMA has been able to generate results much faster than the typical multi-year antitrust case. 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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Can AI clinical co-pilots break open Canada’s EMR ecosystem?
AI now has a credible path to disrupt Canada’s electronic medical record (EMR) markets. Not through wholesale replacement, but by working above and beside existing systems. Ambient scribes and second-screen clinical decision support (CDS) tools are already changing the lived experience of care without ripping out core infrastructure.
Read the full article here.
CAMP Submission to the Competition Bureau’s Proposed Anti-Competitive Conduct and Agreements Enforcement Guidelines
As part of its mandate, Canada's Competition Bureau routinely publishes and updates guidance on how the agency enforces different aspects of the Competition Act. In January 2026, the Bureau completed a public consultation on its proposed changes to its guidance related to the enforcement of Canada's laws against anti-competitive conduct and agreements. To ensure public interest voices were present, CAMP participated in the consultation with a short submission summarizing our perspective on the proposed guidance.
CAMP supports the Bureau’s move toward a unified, conduct-first approach for enforcement guidance, greater use of temporary orders to speed the resolution of competition issues, the inclusion of a more up-to-date understanding of market power and dominance, and recognition that anti-competitive conduct and agreement provisions can address serial acquisitions that fall outside traditional merger review. While room for improvement exists, CAMP encourages the Bureau to move quickly to adopt this guidance and begin a more active and assertive era of competition law enforcement.
Check out CAMP's full submission here
Letters: Clipped Wings
January 25, 2026Welcome 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:
If you enjoy Letters, please considering sharing and supporting CAMP. Now let’s dive in.
Bureau Cuts Clash with Competition CommitmentsLast year, Minister of Industry Melanie Joly said her government would be “hawkish” on competition. This week, it’s looking like the emphasis in that statement is going to be on the “ish.” As reported this week by Peter Nowak at Do Not Pass Go, the Competition Bureau is cutting 24 positions over the next three years, about 5% of its current staff. While these cuts are in line with the sufficiently bureaucratic “workforce adjustment” across the federal public service, the move undermines the government’s own commitments on promoting competition in Canada. If you’re looking at federal spending, you would need a microscope to find the Competition Bureau. At $70 million a year, the law enforcement agency makes up about 0.01% of annual spending. But like any investment, the real question is the rate of return on this investment. Competition investigations have the potential to shift multi-billion-dollar markets. Take the Bureau’s ongoing investigation into whether the policies of real estate associations are limiting competition in the market for realtors. A quick back of the envelope with Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) data suggests Canadians could be spending as much as $15 billion annually on commissions for realtors. This means even a 0.5% shift in favour of buyers and sellers would put the budget of the Bureau back in the pockets of Canadians. But these wins do not come easy. Every day the Competition Bureau squares off against the legal teams and resources of some of the largest companies on the planet, with ongoing investigation and litigation against Rogers, Google, DoorDash, and Amazon. Effectively enforcing Canada’s competition law takes proper financial and human resources. Moving in the wrong direction on Bureau funding means Canadians can expect less relief as the agency narrows its scope in response. As affordability remains a top priority for Canadians, adequate Bureau funding is an extremely cost effective signal that the government is serious about its previous commitments. Reversing this shortsighted decision and instead boosting the resources of the Competition Bureau is an easy way for this government to make good on its hawkish talk. Even If You’re Not on Amazon, You’re on AmazonThere’s always been one obstacle for Amazon to live up to its moniker as “the everything store”: literally everything cannot be found on Amazon. Despite its digital dominance, businesses of all sizes, whether they use tools like Shopify or stand up their own sites, continue to avoid the platform in their operations. But a new brief from the Institute of Local Self Reliance shows that Amazon has the cure for this independence: scraping the sites of independent businesses without their permission, displaying their wares on the platform, and using bots to anonymously purchase the products. With the introduction of a special “Buy For Me” button, Amazon can display the offerings of independent retailers and send an AI agent to buy the product, breaking the link between customer and business. While the independent retailer may get a sale, they are cut out of the relationship and critical data that comes with every purchase, only selling to a faceless Amazon agent. That this is a bad deal for retailers is evident in Amazon’s conduct when the conduct flows in the other direction. The company swiftly sent a cease and desist letter to AI search company Perplexity when it discovered the company was scraping the e-commerce giant’s own listings. As ILSR shows, the straightforward way to prevent this is to ban scraping and proxy purchasing without the express consent of retailers. One of the reasons entrepreneurs start businesses is because they want the freedom to forge their own path. Policies like these would put control back in the hands of the people who own and operate their own businesses amid the steady march of centralization in our economies. If a business decides to use Amazon that’s their choice, but even the largest companies on the planet need to respect the decision to remain independent. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
Bounded Optimism for the FTC’s Appeal of Meta LawsuitLast year, a U.S. judge ruled that Meta did not hold a monopoly in “personal social networking services,” ruling in favour of Meta in a lawsuit aiming to reverse the company’s purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp. Despite its control over world-leading social media platforms, Judge Boasberg found that Meta had plenty of competitors. The only problem? That definition of social media included properties as disparate as TikTok and YouTube. This week, news came that the FTC would be contesting the lines the judge drew around the relevant market and appealing the decision. Market definition is a frequent sticking point in antitrust cases, leaving plenty of room for disagreement. When it comes to social media, a key question is what brings a user to the app and keeps them coming back. Mark Zuckerberg has long described Facebook as a “social utility” that underwrites everything from sharing photos to life milestones to events. The reason you use Facebook might be similar to the reasons you use Instagram or WhatsApp, but the further away we move from these original purposes the more tenuous the market definition becomes. Vertical videos do not a market make, and we’re sufficiently skeptical that consumers are coming to Facebook and YouTube for the same experience. But as our friends at American Economic Liberties Projects point out, there’s reason to be skeptical of the motivations of the Trump 2.0 FTC. The decision deserves to be overturned, but is the current FTC Chair trying to protect competition or extract more concessions from an already pliant Zuckerberg? A year into this administration’s approach to antitrust has generated plenty of room to suspect this appeal will be another case of quid pro quo competition policy and result in a sweetheart settlement. We’re happy to be proven wrong, but until then we’ll be bounding our optimism. 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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