August 2, 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 installment we have:

• Prominent tech CEOs worry about finding themselves on the wrong side of an AI monopoly
• Why Canada should follow Europe’s lead on reining in the giants of cloud computing
• Canada’s Big Banks put their size to good use squeezing savers with stingy rates

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Now let’s dive in.

Mark Zuckerberg Hates Monopoly Now

Welcome to the team, Mark Zuckerberg. This week, Meta joined Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI and other major technology companies in warning governments against restrictions on open-weight AI models. The letter comes as policy makers in the U.S. weigh action against rising Chinese AI capabilities based largely on open-weight models. The companies’ stated rationale? Innovation, safety, and broad access to AI capabilities. The subtext? The worry that they are in danger of finding themselves on the wrong side of a frontier AI model monopoly, dependent on a single provider who can call the shots on their own businesses.

Crocodile tears aside, the warning over who controls what could be one of the most powerful technologies is an important one. Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal describes the problem clearly: a single AI company powerful enough to influence research priorities, distribute advanced cybersecurity tools and decide which public-sector uses deserve support poses a massive threat to society. A model theoretically capable of crippling a major bank becomes part of the infrastructure banks need to protect themselves from it. The market for AI could look less like commerce and more like a protection racket.

That’s where we are today. Companies like Anthropic decide which researchers, businesses, and countries can use their most advanced systems, under what conditions, and at what price. The anti-monopoly case for open AI begins with a simple principle: capabilities essential to the future of science, cybersecurity and public administration cannot remain subject to the discretion of a few private firms. Open-weight models can diffuse some of this risk, but the need for oversight by societies, not companies, remains. The companies warning governments about concentrated control have identified the right danger. They may be less on board with where that argument actually leads.

📰 CAMP in the News 📰

• ​Canada has banned some prediction markets. Wealthsimple is showcasing them anyway. (National Observer)
• ​Canada’s safety net is collapsing (Ricochet Media)

Keeping our Heads in the Clouds

Earlier this month, the European Union released its preliminary position that Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure be designated cloud computing gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Such a designation would impose obligations to make the cloud computing market more contestable, competitive, and fairer. But the cloud oligopoly is a global, rather than European, problem. In the Financial Post this week, the authors of CAMP’s recent Parting Clouds report argue that Canada faces the same issue as Europe and should be acting now instead of sitting on the sidelines.

So far, the federal government’s actions have largely been limited to investment support for “sovereign compute,” which can look a lot like subsidizing Canada’s favourite telecom giants to build data centres. Canada needs domestic compute capacity, but federal efforts will always pale in comparison to the near trillion dollars hyperscalers are committing to global compute buildsouts. Actually doing something about Canada’s digital dependency means making sure that the capacity of those cloud giants isn’t used to lock-in customers and control the future of technology markets.

Canada needs a plan for the digital infrastructure that keeps our businesses and public services running. For the Competition Bureau, it means examining the contracts and business practices of cloud providers to ensure they’re not throttling competition. For the federal government, it means a strategy for public sector procurement that builds interoperability and portability into contracts, and regulation that treats computing like a utility service. Whether AI is a bubble or not is beside the point. Canada’s digital infrastructure cannot be a tool of coercion for use by companies or countries.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Osborne, Case Study: Why Can’t Canada Make Cans? (Canadian Shield Institute)
• Rugitsky, A Fragile Food Regime (Phenomenal World)
• Brady, StubHub CEO Eric Baker is under scrutiny for enabling mass scalpers on his ticket reselling platform (Fortune)

Big Banks, Small Savings

Canada’s Big Six banks hold roughly 85 per cent of the country’s deposits, a remarkably large pool of cheap and dependable funding for their operations. What do savers get in return for that loyalty? Not much. Analysis by Hanif Bayat in the Globe this week found that across savings products, the Big Six banks are often in dead last when it comes to the rates they pay out to savers. Where competitors offer 2% or more on savings accounts, the stingy Big Banks hover around 0.55% for comparable products.

This gap is a clear illustration of market power and the inertia keeping customers in inferior products. When most Canadians keep their savings with the same small group of institutions, those banks face limited pressure to compete aggressively for that cash. Familiar logos, bundled products and the pain of moving your financial life around make the jump to a better product seem like more trouble than it’s worth. friction of moving an entire financial life help turn customer inertia into margin. At CAMP we’ve been at this for a while, pointing out that Canada’s famously profitable banks are a drain on the country.

But progress is being made. Canadian policy makers are creating more opportunities for competition in the banking market. Though long delayed, open banking standards that will make it easier to switch financial products are on the way. Even the head of Canada’s stuffiest banking regulator is working to create more competition. That competition will bid down the Big Banks’ fat profit margins by forcing them to hand over higher interest rates on savings and lower rates on lending. A dollar saved should do more work for the saver than the bank it’s sitting in. That might be the case in Canada sooner than we think.

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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