May 31, 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:

• CAMP releases our recipe for more competition in Canada’s grocery market
• Open Markets makes the case in the New York Times for anti-monopoly action across the food system
• California’s COMPETE Act moves closer to closing a key monopoly loophole in the Golden State

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Now let’s dive in.

CAMP Releases Guide for a Grocery Golden Age

We talk a lot about groceries at CAMP. We’ve written reports and op-eds, given interviews, and even done a podcast or two. But taking all that in takes time, time most people don’t have. That’s why this week CAMP released our Grocery Guide, a short and digestible summary of what we think policymakers should be doing to make a grocery market that actually serves Canadians. Action couldn’t come sooner: one in four Canadians now experience food insecurity and prices are still on the rise. Canadians are stepping up to help one another out, including the folks at SAVR who have built an app to help you find the lowest grocery prices in your area.

But those important individual efforts need to be matched with system-level change that delivers benefits to Canadians. Consolidated incumbents use their power to lock new entrants out of the market with practices like property controls, exclusivity arrangements, and kickbacks for access to shelf space. As algorithmic pricing takes off, shoppers will be less able to engage in the comparison shopping that allows us to save a buck or two every trip. Unwinding and preventing these harmful practices is key to a fairer future for Canada’s grocery market.

There isn’t one weird trick, and there isn’t one person or institution who can solve this problem on their own. That’s why the Grocery Guide includes a comprehensive set of ideas for federal, provincial, and even municipal governments to run with. Provinces like Manitoba and cities like Toronto are already charging ahead, and we want to make it as easy as possible for other governments to follow their lead. Canadians deserve a fair and competitive grocery market, and we’ve got the recipe.

📰 CAMP in the News 📰

• ​The Bread Price-Fixing Scandal is Far From Over (Do Not Pass Go)

Farmers and Consumers Can Be Anti-Monopoly Allies

Letters readers know that the monopoly issues in our food system extend far beyond the grocery aisle and far beyond our borders. These days, Americans share the same anxiety as Canadians as our totals at checkout creep ever higher. Writing in the New York Times this week, Open Markets’ Claire Kelloway and Sandeep Vaheesan call for anti-monopoly action across the food system to relieve pressure on both consumers and producers. As external shocks ripple through our economy, Kelloway and Vaheesan document how the companies that have consolidated these markets are set to use that volatility to justify higher costs for farmers and consumers alike.

Competition in the food system is often viewed as a zero-sum game between consumers and farmers: consumers want the lowest prices while farmers want higher prices for their products. But farmers are victims of the same consequences of consolidation. In the U.S. and Canada, decades of consolidation in meat processing, bread-making and packaged foods have created an environment where price-fixing and gouging can flourish. As CAMP covered in our report Plow to Pantry back in 2024, most farmers understand that this consolidation is harmful to their businesses.

From Plow to Pantry: Monopoly in the Canadian Food System (2024)

In their piece, Kelloway and Vaheesan argue that by tackling the practices and structures in these concentrated industries, both farmers and consumers can be made better off. In Canada at least, authorities appear to be listening. Just this week, two Manitoba John Deere equipment dealerships abandoned a proposed merger amid Competition Bureau scrutiny. Last week the Bureau forced the spin-off of a Saskatchewan grain elevator to preserve competition in the grain-handling market. An anti-monopoly approach is the only way to deliver higher prices at the farmgate and lower prices at the checkout.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Bednar, McLeod, Corbett, Osborne, Tiessen and da Mota, Exploited and Underutilized: Canada’s Broken Data Economy (Canadian Shield Institute)
• Parys, The Iran war gets blamed for Canadian inflation. Here’s what we’re missing (Toronto Star)
• McGrath, ANALYSIS: One small trick to boost grocery competition (TVO)

California’s Antitrust Agenda Advances

California is one step closer to a major victory in competition and consumer protection law, with the COMPETE Act passing its vote in the Assembly and moving on to the state Senate. The COMPETE Act would reform California’s antitrust law and give state authorities the power to go after individual monopolies rather than having to rely on federal courts and regulators. As CAMP has covered, state antitrust action is increasingly important as federal authorities effectively abandon their posts under the Trump Administration.

The COMPETE Act would close a key loophole in California’s antitrust law, the Cartwright Act, that exempts illegal monopolization by a single firm from state enforcement. As our colleagues at the American Economic Liberties Project point out, this loophole has stymied the ability of California’s powerful Attorney General to protect consumers and small businesses. Recently, this allowed Amazon’s practice of pressuring of third-party sellers to raise prices on non-Amazon platforms to escape state enforcement.

Bringing California’s antitrust laws up to speed would be a major upgrade in the global fight against monopoly. And this isn’t the only anti-monopoly fight occurring in the Golden State. Now that the U.S. DOJ has given the green light to the hugely damaging Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, all eyes are on whether the state Attorney General will step in to block the takeover in defense of consumers, workers, and filmmakers in California and around the world. Subnational actors like U.S. states and Canadian provinces are reminding us that the anti-monopoly fight must be waged on many fronts.

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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