September 20, 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 installment we have:
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Carney’s European Pitch Hits an Anti-Monopoly High NoteThis week brought the news that the leader European Union would like Canada to join the block under a first-of-its-kind “Associate Member” status. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry, they haven’t quite figured it out either. But the move is a clear indication of Canada’s intent to move closer to the European Community amid increasing global uncertainty. While the associate member status stole most of the headlines, possibly more important was Prime Minister Carney’s speech to the European Parliament. In it, Carney made a compelling pitch for reducing dependence not just on hegemonic countries, but dominant companies as well. With specific reference to the power of Big Tech, Carney made clear the risk of monopoly: “Technology platforms increasingly seek to act as sovereign powers. They want to dictate the rules of regulation – and even circumvent them.” In Canada, we know this all too well. This week, the software company Proton released a report showing 87% of Canadian companies were dependent on U.S. tech firms, as are all levels of our governments. To break with this monopoly arrangement means greater resilience and, paraphrasing the PM, the ability to live as one wishes. But walking this path is not without costs, and the actions of the Carney government so far tell a mixed story. While the federal government invests in diversifying trade relationships, the food system, and even our internet infrastructure, they also fly in the heads of American and global high finance to consider divvying up important infrastructure like our airports. While the federal government has introduced legislation to impose obligations on tech platforms to protect Canadians online, a meaningful challenge to their dominance in their respective markets remains absent and the threat of trade pressures loom large. Carney’s speech this week had the anti-monopoly approach at its core. Reaping the proposed benefits of this approach will mean doing the hard work to make those words ring true. 📰 CAMP in the News 📰
Rolling Up the RinkHockey is our nation’s pastime, but that hasn’t protected the sport from falling victim to private equity and consolidation. This week, LiveBarn, a company that offers amateur sports streaming, announced a mergerwith Spordle, a sport league management company, and Gamesheet, a scoring and statistics company. Earlier this year, LiveBarn was purchased by American private equity group GTCR, and all three companies will be managed under the banner of Ascent Sports Group. Combined, the company is now a vertically integrated offering to handle nearly every aspect of amateur sports management. To drive growth, LiveBarn offered free installation of their streaming cameras in exchange for exclusive streaming rights for local venues. These kinds of exclusivity contracts mean anyone who wants to watch games at that facility must do so through a LiveBarn subscription. If this exclusive approach is then tied to its newly acquired league management and stats and scorekeeping services, Ascent Sports will start to look less like a scrappy upstart and more like the Ticketmaster of amateur hockey. According to users on Reddit, this squeeze is already underway, with LiveBarn recently hiking prices for subscribers. Private equity’s entrance into youth sports is a growing concern at home and abroad. In the U.S., private equity’s entry into youth sports like hockey and cheerleading has driven costs of participation up by nearly 50% over the past five years. This threatens to push kids from lower- or middle-income families out of youth sports entirely. And no sport should be considered safe: Canada has at least one company rolling up martial arts dojos. Sports has always been an uneasy mix of passion and profit, but preserving the accessibility of sports for kids should transcend that tension. 📚 What We’re Reading 📚
AI Companies: Stop Us, Before We Kill AgainThis week, many of the upper echelons of the American AI industry, led by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, have rallied around a call to slow development and implement safety guardrails on the rapidly evolving technology. The proposal relies on industry embedded safety auditors and voluntary coordinated safety commitments between frontier labs. While tech titans talk existential risk we see something else: an attempt to entrench their market position, determine the path of technological development, and skate over new iterations of very real but familiar risks. AI companies have been able to exert undue influence on policymaking and regulation of their technologies, in part because they’ve successfully pushed a narrative of impending existential risk. As the march of headlinesconcerning rogue AI incidents continues, it’s clear that there’s real risk to reckless AI development. Why then should the same companies hurtling down this path be expected to change their ways so long as their competitors agree to do the same? AI must be regulated, but how to regulate AI must begin with the specific harms here and on the horizon, an understanding of the limitations of existing regulatory tools, and the building up of capacity within our governments to adequately protect citizens. Former FTC Chair Lina Khan argues that countries already have many laws that need to be applied to AI. These include consumer protection laws against defective products, sector specific safety regulations, and cybersecurity standards. It’s already illegal to hack into computer systems, and companies responsible for the models doing so should be held liable when their safety standards fall short and their products cause damage because their safety standards fall short. What’s more likely to generate action on the part of companies: a pinky promise not to accidentally kill everyone or real consequences for the executives responsible for releasing these dangerous products? 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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