March 15, 2026

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:

• CRTC scores a win by banning fees that drive up the cost for consumers to switch providers
• CAMP fellow Rachel Wasserman lays out the risk of retail investor access to private markets
• DOJ and Ticketmaster reach lightning settlement that leaves consumers, artists, and venues in the lurch

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Now let’s dive in.

CRTC Bans Fees That Keep Canadians Locked in Cell Plans

This week, the CRTC has banned cellphone and internet service providers from charging fees when customers activate or modify their plans. This means no activation fees, no fees when you change an aspect of your plan, and best of all, no fees for cancelling your plan. This ruling is part of the CRTC’s Consumer Protections Action Plan, which, as of October 2025, lays out the CRTC roadmap for stronger protection of Canadian telecom consumers. Though work remains to be done, CAMP welcomes the CRTC’s decision to remove a key source of friction for Canadian consumers.

Fees on consumers that want to add, modify or cancel plans are a subtle tactic for raising costs while keeping advertised prices flat. But they also discipline customers trying to get the most out of competition in the market. The CRTC correctly identifies these junk fees as not just a cost to consumers but also a barrier to real competition. By increasing the cost of moving providers, telcos discourage consumers from seeking out better deals. This means consumers can stay locked in, even when they could be getting better service elsewhere.

In the past year, CAMP has become a more active participant representing the public interest in CRTC proceedings, enabled by a cost awards process that allows civil society organizations to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Rogers, Bell and Telus. In the past year, CAMP has advocated for better consumer protections during service outages and to protect the wholesale system that lets independent internet companies compete with the Big 3. In 2026, CAMP will continue to advocate for consumers and competition in front of the CRTC. The banning of switching fees should be just the first in a series of wins for telecom consumers this year.

📰 CAMP in the News 📰

• The Open, 'I worry that retail is being brought to the party at the wrong time' (BNN Bloomberg)
• Legree, The ‘obvious candidate’: Jeanne Pratt favoured by lawyers, academics to take over as competition commissioner (The Wire Report)

Why Private Markets Should Stay Private

The Ontario Securities and Commission (OSC), the provincial capital markets regulator, wants to give the average investor easier access to private markets, including investments into private equity, and other assets that are not listed on public exchanges. The OSC pitches this as an opportunity to increase the amount of capital available for investment and to give regular folks access to potential returns they might otherwise by shut out from. But in a piece for the Globe this week, CAMP fellow Rachel Wasserman and former OSC chair Edward Waitzer argue that the prospect may be less appealing for mom and pop investors than it seems.

Private markets are more opaque than their public counterparts where regulators require disclosure and transparency to ensure investors have accurate information. They’re also less liquid, meaning that getting out of an underperforming asset is more difficult than it would be on a public exchange. Retail investors would also be welcomed in just as the smart money starts to head out the door. The S&P index has outperformed private equity over one-, five-and ten-year time periods, and several private markets are seeing record outflows and holds on investors cashing out.

Wasserman and Waitzer argue that opening these markets to retail investors could even be a bad deal for the private markets themselves. With retail investors comes the potential for scrutiny, regulation and litigation, eroding the looser treatment that attracted more sophisticated capital in the first place. While more opportunity for the masses sounds attractive at first, under the hood are serious risks for both retail and institutional investors. Ontario should heed these risks and keep private markets private.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Bednar, As U.S. state and Big Tech become one, we become digital serfs, and it sucks (The Globe and Mail)
• Dayen and Stoller, Why Your Lamp Sucks (Organized Money)
• Mullin and Khan, Sovereign by Design: Strategic Options for Canadian AI Sovereignty (Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy)

The Art of Caving Immediately

On Monday, Ticketmaster Live Nation and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced they had reached a settlement of the antitrust case against the company’s live entertainment monopoly. While settlements in antitrust cases are common, this is not one of those cases. Details from the courtroom are sordid, with the presiding judge, the DOJ’s own prosecutor, and state attorneys general all blindsided by a settlement apparently cooked between Ticketmaster and DOJ leadership by the end of the first week of the trial.

It will not shock you to learn that the settlement is weak. Ticketmaster’s concessions to competitors are a watered down “open sourcing” of their platform, granting them the privilege to use a busted system propped up by Live Nation’s dominance in venues and artist representation. Live Nation will also allow competitors to book shows at 13 select amphitheaters, a fraction of its holdings. Finally, there’s a 15% cap on fees, which leaked internal messages show Ticketmaster employees discuss as “robbing [concertgoers] blind.”

Thankfully, the state attorneys general that brought the case with the DOJ intend to pursue their own claims against Ticketmaster Live Nation. New York Attorney General Letitia James did not mince words: “We will keep fighting this case without the federal government so that we can secure justice for all those harmed by Live Nation’s monopoly.” The DOJ backing down means that the parallel competition law case brought by the Consumer’s Council of Canada against Ticketmaster is now even more important. The disappointing outcome is another reminder than in the Trump era we cannot count on the U.S. to solve our problems for us.

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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March 8, 2026

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:

• Competition Bureau scores a big win as Google’s constitutional challenge is dismissed
• Ontario’s experience with online betting reminds us that not all competition is good competition
• Ticketmaster has its day in court as the DOJ’s live entertainment antitrust trial kicks off in the U.S.

If you enjoy Letters, please considering sharing and supporting CAMP.

Now let’s dive in.

Google Loses Constitutional Challenge to Competition Act Financial Penalties

Finally, some good news. This week, the Competition Tribunal dismissed a claim brought by Google with the potential to shape the future of competition law in Canada. Preparations are underway for the Competition Bureau to take Google to trial in early 2027 (too long, we know) for abusing its dominance in online advertising. In response to the Bureau’s suit, Google argued that the potential financial penalties from the trial could be so large that they qualified as a criminal punishment. Google’s position was that accordingly it should have the same rights as someone under criminal persecution, those rights had been violated, and the entire case should be brought to a halt.

So, what does this mean and why does it matter? Not so long ago, Canada’s competition law had loser monetary penalties, capping out at $10 million ($15 million if you really misbehaved). For reference, last year Google’s revenue in Canadian dollars was ~$540 billion. To call the old penalties a parking ticket would be an insult to parking tickets. But in 2023 that changed. Canada beefed up its competition laws and changed the ceiling for penalties to include 3% of annual worldwide revenues over the course of the conduct. This means monetary penalties finally have the heft to deter abuses of corporate dominance.

Had Google’s complaint succeeded, not only would this important case be put on ice, but the ability of the Tribunal to use monetary penalties to deter anti-competitive conduct would have been thrown into question. Monetary penalties, because they don’t address the underlying issue, are far from ideal when it comes to competition remedies. But when paired with other remedies like breakups and bans, they can be a deterrent and source of restitution for harms to competition. We’re still waiting anxiously to see Google’s abuse of dominance case go to trial. But in the meantime, the Tribunal’s decision this week is an important signal that stronger powers under the Competition Act are here to stay.

📰 CAMP in the News 📰

• Deschamps, Google suffers setback in fight against Canada’s competition watchdog (City News)
• Hughes, Live Nation's antitrust trial is underway in the U.S. What's at stake in the case? (CBC News)
• Schofield, Norton Rose Fulbright Hires Canada’s Former Top Competition Official for Antitrust Practice(Law.com)

Online Betting Competition isn’t Delivering for Ontarians

If you’ve watched live sports recently, you’ve likely been inundated with ads for online betting apps. Though the federal government opened the door to single-event sports betting in 2021, Ontario is so far the only province to have opened its online betting markets to competition in 2022. Opening markets typically brings the expected benefits of competition, lower prices, higher quality, more choice. But when the market itself generates negative side effects, competition can end up being a race to the bottom. In the case of online betting in Ontario, those costs are starting to add up.

This week a new report found that since opening up competition, the number of gambling related calls to Ontario’s mental health hotline have increased 300%. Paired with gambling-related bankruptcies quadrupling, this suggests a sharp uptick in harmful gambling habits, particularly among young men. Gambling apps don’t win by pitching moderation. They compete through gamification, free introductory bets, and splurging on ad spending. Like any market with social side effects, most users strike a better balance with their use of these apps. But data from Ontario suggests that the current approach is causing real harms to vulnerable users.

We want more competition in Canada, but online betting reminds us that we need to think about the kind of competition we want. We need to take a pause and evaluate what the consequences of competition have been in this market and consider whether some markets should stay closed. Absent that, researchers at Cardus suggest that harms could be reduced by taking steps like banning in-game betting and omnipresent gambling ads. Competition isn’t always the answer, and with stakes this high we might be better served by walking away from the table.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Paikin, Bednar, McLellan and Surman, Can Canada Regain Its Digital Sovereignty? (TVO Today)
• Heath-Rawlings, Palmer and Kelselman, How Did Canada Become a Country of Monopolies? It started as one (CanCon Podcast)
• Herrine, Market Governance in Trumpworld (LPE Project)

Front Row at Ticketmaster Live Nation

The antitrust case against Ticketmaster Live Nation brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) went to trial this week, the first major salvo against the company’s dominance in live entertainment. The case is long time coming. Ticketmaster was allowed to consummate its merger with Live Nation in 2010, and the sixteen year experiment of allowing the concert goliath to combine has, in the words of Kid Rock, “failed miserably.” At the heart of the trial is Ticketmaster’s ability to leverage their dominant positions across the entertainment ecosystem, ticketing, venue ownership, artist representation, to squeeze out competing players.

Now, finally, the monopoly at the heart of the live entertainment industry in the U.S. and Canada will have to answer for at least some of the damage it has caused to concertgoers, artists, independent venues, and competitors. At stake is the structure of the company itself. Though the judge overseeing the trial has narrowed the claims of the lawsuit, a breakup of the company’s ticketing and venue management lines of business is still in the mix. Rather than “thou shalt not” conduct requirements that have proven ineffective in the past, a breakup would get to heart of how Ticketmaster flexes power across the live entertainment landscape.

Though occurring in the U.S., the trial will likely have implications for the Canadian concertgoing market. If the DOJ is successful, a breakup of the company or far-reaching remedy that prevents Ticketmaster from engaging in anticompetitive conduct could apply to venues north of the border. The outcome will also be instructive for a similar lawsuit brought by the Consumers Council of Canada, which is currently seeking leave to the Competition Tribunal. If you’re interested in the day-to-day of the trial, be sure to check out Gigi Liman’s coverage at Big Tech On Trial for excellent coverage and context of a trial that will be critical for concertgoers, artists, and independent venues.

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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March 1, 2026

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:

• Carney’s take on bringing down the cost of living misses his anti-monopoly opportunity
• Goodlife flirts with the private equity playbook after Apollo investment in the Canadian fitness giant
• Netflix walks away from blockbuster Warner Bros. bid after Paramount goes all-in

If you enjoy Letters, please considering sharing and supporting CAMP.

Now let’s dive in.

How to Talk about the Cost of Living Without Talking about the Cost of Living

In recent months, the Carney government’s approach to bringing down the cost of living is coming into view. In late January, the Carney government announced an increase to the GST tax credit for low-income Canadians, along with a grab bag of measures to support producers and reference to supporting the work of the Competition Bureau. This week, the government released a video of the Prime Minister laying out his theory of how the government plans to bring down costs for Canadians. The problem? The video spends almost no time talking about bringing down costs for Canadians.

The video walks through the story of pandemic supply chain shocks driving increased inflation that has left Canadians with increased costs while wages struggle to catch up. Carney recognizes that while inflation has cooled, food prices continue to lead the average, and Canadians continue to struggle with the cost of putting food on the table. But when it comes to bringing those costs down, the government is sticking with admiring the problem. Instead of putting forward solutions, the Carney government’s approach is limited to a tax credit bump and banking on productivity to eventually bring up wages.

We never recommend reading the comments, but let’s get a sample of reactions: “address monopolies,” “stop price gouging,” “we hate oligarchs and monopolies.” We’re not running a bot farm, we swear. Canadians understand that oligopolies have benefitted from the inflation that has dogged the economy in recent years. While additional relief for struggling folks is welcome, the Carney government is leaving a powerful tool on the table: competition. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Financial relief and rising wages paired with assertive action to break up oligopolies would deliver higher paycheques and lower prices at checkout. As an economist who wrote his masters thesis on competition, Carney understands this more than most. That’s why it’s disappointing to see his government tie one hand behind its back in the fight for affordability.

📰 CAMP in the News 📰

• Zhu, A conspiracy or just a problem? Expert explains why your groceries might weigh less than the package (NOW Magazine)

Midlife Fitness

The days of the free Goodlife bag may be over. This week, American private equity giant Apollo announced a strategic minority investment into the privately owned Canadian company Goodlife Fitness, which operates over 400 gym locations under different brands across Canada. The Apollo-Goodlife deal is being pitched as providing the fitness company with additional capital for expansion, but we know from experience what to expect when private equity comes to town.

Private equity buying a stake in a company changes the logic driving the business. While business owners gain by building the value of companies, private equity more frequently gains by extracting what value has already been generated. This phenomenon was extensively documented by CAMP fellow Rachel Wasserman in her 2024 report, The Private Equity Playbook. What this extraction process often looks like is the simultaneous raising of prices while pulling down quality. For Goodlife customers this could mean rising membership fees, lower spend on keeping facilities in good shape, and even an end to their iconic free bag on sign up.

While certainly no longer a small business, what’s going on at Goodlife is emblematic of a broader trend in Canada. Small and mediums sized businesses are amid a succession crisis, with owners reaching retirement age and having no plan for business continuity. An increasingly popular choice for owners in sectors like dental and veterinary care, for example, is to sell their businesses to private equity-owned conglomerates engaged in roll ups of these once diverse markets. Canadian businesses need to know about different options for succession, like employee ownership, and regulators need to keep an eye on these creeping acquisitions. Having the private equity playbook applied to the Canadian economy is a recipe for a deeply unfit economy.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Social Capital Partners, Market study submission: Competition in financing for Canada's SMEs​
• Penrose, Group including TurboTax, H&R Block lobbying Ottawa on tax auto-filing (Investigative Journalism Foundation)
• Flight, The 2026 Global Intelligence Crisis (Citadel Securities)

Netflix is Out, Paramount is In

What a difference a week makes. After the board of Warner Brothers Discovery declared Netflix the superior buyer, the streaming giant has declined to beat Paramount’s new offer of $111 billion USD, paving the way for Paramount to acquire the entertainment conglomerate. From an anti-monopoly standpoint, very little has changed. Though a Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros. has different contours than a Netflix takeover, the outcome remains the same: consolidation of important entertainment and news markets.

One thing that has changed though is the White House’s approach to the transaction. After waffling on whether he would insert himself in the deal process, Paramount’s owner, David Ellison, is directly aligned with Trump administration, and has used their earlier acquisition of CBS News to bring the network in line with the President’s agenda. But the federal government is not the only game in town. California’s state attorney general is currently reviewing the deal, and given the centrality of the entertainment industry to the state economy the stakes are high.

In the end, Paramount might consider itself lucky if regulators block the deal. Warner Bros. is a legendary M&A albatross. In 2001, early internet giant AOL purchased Time Warner for $183 billion USD, widely considered one of the worst mergers in history. In 2018, telecom giant AT&T was allowed to acquire the once again independent Time Warner for roughly $108 billion USD, promptly realized the mistake it had made, and spun the company off in 2022 through a merger with Discovery Inc. Now less than four years later, Paramount believes this time will be different. But whether it makes business sense for Paramount is beside the point. Regulators in the U.S. and around the world need to present a strong defense of competition and diversity in the entertainment market and block this illegal transaction.

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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February 22, 2026

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 leads the G7 in food inflation, what are we going to do about it?
• Massive majority of Canadians support greater control over social media platforms
• Independent grocers in New York take food giant to court over distribution changes

If you enjoy Letters, please considering sharing and supporting CAMP.

Now let’s dive in.

We’re Number One

It’s Olympic season so we’re feeling suitably patriotic at CAMP. Unfortunately, alongside some disappointing hockey results, there’s another grim category in which Canada is leading the world: food inflation. In January, the annual rate of food inflation hit 7.3%, the highest among our G7 peers. The figure is another reminder that despite overall inflation falling, Canadians continue to struggle with elevated and steadily increasing food prices. But what should we expect when we continue to take a wait and see approach to stemming the rising tide of food costs?

Thankfully the tide is turning in North America on the belief that we can’t do anything about food prices. In 2022, Mexico broke with economic orthodoxy by striking a bargain with major grocers that slowed the price growth of a basket of staples in exchange for supply-side measures that would increase production. The mood is catching. This week a major Democrat-aligned think tank, the Center for American Progress, released a report arguing for capping the price of a basket of basic goods paired with measures to increase competition and expand future food production.

So, what should Canada’s response be? We have powerful tools across both federal and provincial governments to increase competition and bring down prices for Canadians. At the federal level, the government can invest in the Competition Bureau and point those stepped-up resources at the monopolies across the supply chain while flexing the ability fo supply management to tamp down price growth. At the provincial level, governments can ban practices by major grocers like property controls, exclusivity contracts, and supplier kickbacks that kill competition and squeeze consumers. With plenty of tools in the toolbox, we know that the wait and see approach is not delivering. If we want to arrest the rise in the cost of living, we need to intervene in the markets that matter.

Canadians Want to Take Back Control of Social Media

Though we are stereotypically agreeable people, there isn’t much that 90% of Canadians agree on. But this week, it turns out that one of those things is reining in the excesses of major social media platforms, especially when it comes to kids. Polling this week shows that 90% of Canadians support an age-based ban on social media platforms and for platforms to be held responsible for the content they show young Canadians. Even for Big Tech critics like us, the level of support is striking.

But it shouldn’t be. Canadians deserve a say over how the largest platforms for communication and commerce operate within our borders. These companies hold tremendous power as economic, social, and democratic infrastructure. Since the founding of this country Canadians have understood that companies that play these important roles are require regulation to ensure our interests are protected. Though we may have thought differently at the turn of the millennium, the internet has not changed this logic.

Over the past year, the Big Tech regulation conversation has taken place in the shadow of Donald Trump and the Canada-U.S. trade relationship. We’ve been told that if we take a hands-off approach today, we’ll be rewarded with stability tomorrow. But we’ve seen what that’s got us so far. Abandoning the Digital Services Tax, which was projected to raise over $7 billion in annual revenue from digital giants, soothed trade tensions for approximately ten minutes. Canadians are clear that they want a say over how some of the world’s largest companies operate. Policymakers should listen to them.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Haavardsrud, Anti-monopoly Man (CBC Cost of Living)
• Penrose, Group including TurboTax, H&R Block lobbying Ottawa on tax auto-filing (Investigative Journalism Foundation)
• Ball, The State of Video Gaming in 2026 (Epyllion)

American Mom and Pop Supermarkets Take on Food Giant Mondelez

In New York City, one of the world’s largest food companies is threatening to take its cookies elsewhere. Mondelez, the multinational maker of familiar brands like Oreos, Ritz, and Wheat Thins, is ending its practice of direct distribution to independent grocery stores. As industry expert Errol Schweizer covers, the decision puts another middleman in between independent grocers and the goods they want to offer their customers. The expected outcome? Up to another dollar per good on top of already rising prices that will squeeze either consumers or the mom-and-pop shops serving them.

But the association representing these grocers isn’t taking the decision laying down. They’re filing an antitrust suit against Mondelez arguing that the changes unfairly preferences larger stores with their own distribution infrastructure who will continue to have access to direct distribution pricing. The suit comes as New York lawmakers look to step up their antitrust game with the introduction of the Consumer Groceries Pricing Fairness Act which would expand the powers available to the state’s attorney general to go after similar anticompetitive practices.

The case is a reminder of the importance of distribution in retail grocery competition and the value of companies being able to bring their own cases to protect fair competition. In the U.S. and Canada, the infrastructure that independent grocers rely on to compete is increasingly owned by the very superstores they’re competing with. This arrangement means fair competition protected by antitrust laws, including preventing the kind of discrimination that Mondelez is attempting, is more important than ever. We’ll be watching the case closely to see if American policymakers are able to give independent grocers a fair shot at competing.

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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