CAMP tracks, translates, and analyzes ongoing Canadian competition law investigations so that everyday citizens can understand these important economic policy actions.
Abuse of Dominance in Online Advertising
In February of 2024 the Competition Bureau announced it was expanding its investigation into Google’s practices in online advertising markets. Investigating the search giant since 2020, the Bureau’s expanded investigation focused on whether Google is:
- Using its market power to maintain its dominance across the digital advertising supply chain
- Using predatory pricing to keep potential competitors out of the digital advertising market
- Misleading publishers and advertisers about how its advertising products and services operate
In November of 2024, the Competition Bureau announced it would be taking Google to court for abusing its dominance and seeking a break up of the tech giant’s advertising business. Online advertising plays a central role in the digital economy. It affects how businesses reach customers, how online content is funded, and how platforms compete. When one company dominates this system, it can distort the rules of the market, making it harder for rivals to compete fairly and for publishers and advertisers to get a fair deal.
The investigation and suit follows in the footsteps of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) complaint against Google’s conduct in digital advertising markets, which went to trial in September of 2024. In its own investigation, the DOJ alleged that as a result of Google’s anticompetitive conduct in 30% of every ad dollar spent on its platform went to the search giant, highlighting the potential cost of this unchecked power. The Competition Bureau’s challenge of Google’s dominance is a welcome departure from the enforcer’s 2016 findings that Google had not engaged in anticompetitive practices across its many lines of business.
Abuse of Dominance in Real Estate Software
Dye & Durham
The Competition Bureau is investigating Dye & Durham, a cloud-based legal software provider, for potentially abusing its market dominance. The Bureau’s concerns include the blocking of interoperability with other conveyance software, tying together the purchase of multiple products, exclusive supplier deals, and raising switching costs for customers to blunt competition. Conveyance software is used by legal professionals to manage property transactions, including title searches, land registry filings, and mortgage processing—core services in the home-buying process.
Dye & Durham is one of the world’s largest legal technology companies and a dominant player in Canada’s real estate software market. They are used by most major Canadian banks, the only software used by more than 100 municipalities in Ontario and BC, and account for over 50% of the value of bank-issued mortgages in Canada. In 2021, they reportedly raised prices for their software by 400% in Ontario and from 165% to 563% in BC, illustrating the consequences of that dominance for legal professionals and homebuyers. For consumers, this could mean higher legal fees, slower transactions, and increased costs baked into the already expensive process of buying a home.
Algorithmic Collusion
Kalibrate
Kalibrate is a retail analytics company that collects price, cost and output data from Canadian gas stations to train their price-setting algorithms and create pricing guidance for their gas station clients. They operate with a range of small independent and large retail gas station brands and advertise their algorithmic pricing services as a tool to increase margins and avoid price wars. Kalibrate advertises their ability to provide daily pump prices in at least 70 Canadian cities and its pricing software is used by approximately 1,700 gas stations.
The Competition Bureau is investigating whether this software has suppressed competition, creating effectively the same outcome as when competitors coordinate on the prices for goods and services. This could make gas, already a core expense for Canadian households, more expensive, worsening the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. Statistics Canada estimated that households spent around $56.6 billion on fuels in 2023 and increasing the average price per litre of fuel by a penny would cost an extra $404 million annually.
Different from traditional price-fixing concerns however, in the case of Kalibrate, the Bureau is investigating whether the outputs of software rather than the actions of individuals are suppressing competition. As research included in the Bureau’s application shows, the use of pricing software in retail gas markets has the potential to reduce competition and raise prices for consumers.
Algorithmic price-setting is an emerging area of concern for regulators around the world, with both U.S. and Canadian enforcers investigating how these tools may facilitate anti-competitive outcomes. As Kalibrate’s model shows, even without explicit collusion between competitors, algorithmic pricing may still lead to widespread and largely invisible consumer harm, underscoring the urgent need for enforcement and reform.
Drip Pricing
DoorDash
The Competition Bureau is taking legal action against DoorDash because of their allegedly deceptive price advertisements: advertised prices that do not include fixed fees, mislabeling fees as government-imposed, and misrepresenting discounts to customers. Collectively these practices are known as drip pricing, which is illegal in Canada given their potential to mislead consumers and distort fair competition.
The Bureau alleges that DoorDash displays prices that omit mandatory fees like service and small order fees, until late in the checkout process. Since 2015, these hidden fees have generated over $1 billion in revenue and can raise final prices by up to 85%. Although they use disclosures like “other fees apply,” these are insufficient to clarify prices for consumers who often don’t see the full price of their order until the cart or checkout pages. Some of these fees are also grouped with mandatory government fees and taxes under headings such as “fees and estimated taxes,” while other charges are itemized separately, leading customers to believe the grouped charges are all government-imposed. One charge, the so-called “BC Regulatory Response Fee,” is particularly misleading: it is neither government-mandated nor tied to any actual regulation.
These practices not only have the potential to mislead customers, but also to punish competitors that are more transparent with their pricing. By preventing companies from advertising prices that do not actually exist, laws against drip pricing protect consumers as well as competitors that are more transparent with their customers.
Commission Rules and Cooperation Policy
Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA)
The Commissioner of Competition is investigating whether the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) is limiting competition in the real estate market by enforcing rules that restrict how agents operate. Under CREA’s Rules for listing properties on their Multiple Listing Service (MLS) system, there is a “Compensation to Co-operating Broker” rule that requires that the seller’s agent pay the buyer’s agent when a home is sold through the MLS. When buyers do not directly pay their agents, brokers are less likely to offer competitive prices and may steer clients away from properties that offer lower broker commissions.
Additionally, CREA released a Cooperation Policy as of January 3, 2024, that requires residential real estate listings to be placed on the MLS system within three days of being marketed to the public. This makes it more difficult for emerging listing services to compete on elements like the privacy or inventory of listings. The Cooperation Policy does not apply to agents marketing their listings to other agents within their own brokerage, which favors larger brokerages as they are able to advertise to a larger network without breaking the policy. Together, these rules limit how agents can market homes, and any agent who doesn’t follow them risks losing their CREA membership and access to the MLS system.
CREA is one of Canada’s largest single-industry associations with over 160,000 real estate professionals and owns the MLS system, which is the most widely used way of listing a house for sale in Canada. Houses continue to be often the most expensive lifetime purchase for Canadians, with an average national price of $657, 145 in 2023 and the operating revenues of real estate offices are estimated to be as high as $20.9 billion. In one of the most expensive housing markets in the world, opaque and anti-competitive practices around commissions and listings could be especially harmful.
Grocery Market Property Controls
Loblaws-Sobeys
In June 2024, the Competition Bureau announced it was investigating the parent companies of grocery giants Loblaws and Sobeys for their use of property controls to reduce competition in the grocery sector.
Property controls such as exclusivity clauses and restrictive covenants put limits on the potential uses of a property, sometimes even after the property has been sold. When large grocery chains use these tools on prime real estate, they can block new or independent grocers from opening nearby, making it harder for other businesses to compete and for consumers to benefit from more choice, better prices, or closer store options.
The investigation builds on the Competition Bureau’s 2023 study of the retail grocery market, where the law enforcement agency noted that the use of property controls had emerged as a troubling practice preventing the entry and expansion of competing grocers. These practices have real impacts on affordability and access, especially in communities already facing limited food options. The use of these property controls is not unique to Canada, and competition policy advocates in the U.S. have pointed to the use of such controls reducing grocery competition and generating food deserts in lower income and remote communities.
Later in 2024, the Competition Bureau released draft guidance on how it would treat property controls going forward, noting that it would allow exclusivity clauses with a legitimate pro-competitive purpose but consider restrictive covenants inappropriate in all but exceptional cases. As this investigation unfolds, it offers an important window into how competition can be shaped not just by market share or pricing but also by behind-the-scenes legal tools that affect where and how businesses operate.
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