August 31, 2025Welcome 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:
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Build Canada Homes Needs Developers of All SizesThis week, CAMP responded to the Build Canada Homes market sounding guide, a consultation intended to shape the future of the federal government’s efforts to address the housing crisis. While us at CAMP defer to housing policy experts, we are experts in monopoly, and one piece of the consultation gave us pause. In the guide, the government indicated it would focus on striking a small number of large deals, with 300 residential units floated as a cap. While a desire for scale is understandable, this approach risks favouring incumbents, sidelining smaller firms with innovative models that could increase productivity and affordability, and leaving smaller communities grappling with inflated housing costs. This approach could result in what housing policy experts at the Missing Middle Initiative refer to as the “valley of death” for smaller companies, blocking their ability to scale up and bring novel construction methods into the market. Beyond innovation, smaller and more remote communities facing similar housing shortages are ill-served by a model that focuses solely on large projects. Canada’s housing crisis is often seen as a big-city problem, but communities of all sizes face skyrocketing prices. In markets like these, projects under the 300-unit threshold are critical. For example, in recent years the New Brunswick city of Moncton added an average of 1,100 units annually. That means that Build Canada Homes current criteria would require a single developer to account for more than a quarter of new housing to participate. The scope of Canada’s housing crisis means it will take the efforts of players of all sizes. Excluding these firms in the design of Build Canada Homes risks entrenching incumbents, stifling innovation, and overlooking the affordability challenges facing smaller communities. To make the greatest contribution to addressing Canada’s housing crisis, Build Canada Homes must broaden its scope to include diverse participants and project sizes. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰
Keeping Canadian Advertising CanadianWhat is advertising worth to the Canadian economy? New research by Canadian Media Means Business shows the role of advertising within our wider media ecosystem, employing nearly 200, 000 Canadians in journalism, television production, and advertising and contributing over $20 billion to the country’s GDP. But the continued existence of over half of those jobs depends on whether we act to keep those advertising dollars in Canada. Today we’re failing. Sectors in the broader media ecosystem have been sheeding jobs year-over-year as more advertising money – from 76% in 2017 to 92% in 2022 – flows straight to foreign advertising platforms like Google, Meta, and Amazon. For better or worse, advertising plays an important intermediary function in our media ecosystem: advertising money goes to publishers in news and entertainment to subsidize their operations and lower the costs of those goods and services to Canadians. As advertising systems have grown in scale and moved to rely on automated online auctions, the platforms that facilitate these transactions have become more powerful and more consolidated. These companies now act as gatekeepers in the online advertising industry, holding Canadian advertisers and publishers in check while extracting billions from our media economy. Right now, Google’s online advertising monopoly is on trial before the Competition Tribunal, after years of alleged anticompetitive practices. If the Competition Bureau is successful in their case, it offers some hope to shake up the industry and keep more of those advertising dollars within our borders. But we can’t just rely on the Competition Bureau to fix Canada’s advertising ecosystem. Policy makers, advertisers, and consumers all have a role to play in keeping Canadian advertising Canadian. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
Trump Tells Countries to Leave Tech AloneDespite some mixed signals, it’s clear that Trump is in the tank for Big Tech. In another howler of a Truth Social post (truth?), the U.S. President reiterated calls for companies to abandon their efforts to put any guardrails on the behaviour of American tech companies. This time, the President warned that efforts to regulate Big Tech would be met with tariffs and export restrictions on key pieces of U.S. technology. Once again, despite Trump’s flirtation with economic populism, his actions continue to carry water for the interests of the world’s largest tech companies. What has Canada gained so far in backing down on elements of our digital policy agenda? Giving up on Canada’s Digital Services Tax, which would have netted us billions annually to offset Big Tech’s extraction from our economy has seemingly gained us nothing. Canada was hit with tariffs all the same and our negotiating position appears to be deteriorating. While today we can think of this bullying as limited to digital policy, it’s unlikely that Trump will stop there. Today the U.S. is caving to its own industry pressures to roll back rules on “forever chemicals” linked to declining birthrates and cancer and repealing pollution laws and trade partners are unlikely to be exceptions. Capitulating on digital policy today sets the table for a broader rollback of the laws that keep Canadians safe and healthy. Canada needs to stand firm in its ability to police the actions of companies that operate within our borders and impact our citizens. Allied nations in the E.U., U.K. and Australia are pushing forward with legislation to curb Big Tech’s ability to dominate markets, avoid privacy protections, and turn a blind eye to scams. Building on these international relationships and moving as a pack offers the best way forward. We would do well to remind our government that ceding sovereignty tends to be a one-way street. 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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