April 27, 2024

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:

• Federal platforms show an absence of understanding of the intensity of Canada’s two-front monopoly problem
• The potential for tariffs to make the big bigger while small business gets left in the dust
• Meta platforms found to be awash with scam content ahead of the Canadian federal election

Now let’s dive in.

Evaluating the Federal Platforms and Their (Lack) of Competition

As Canadians head out to vote on Monday, CAMP has assessed the federal party platforms from our single-issue anti-monopoly voter perspective. Unfortunately, the results are not promising. In contrast with the cross-partisan support for strengthening Canada’s competition policy in 2023 and 2024, no national party has competition as a cornerstone of its economic policy commitments.

To their credit, the Conservative platform leads with not only mentions of policing unfair competition, but also includes a commitment to engage in an “oligopoly review” of federally regulated sectors and move forward on open banking. Though we can only read so much into two bullet points, both have the potential to be important steps in tackling domestic oligopolies in key sectors.

The single mention of the Competition Bureau in the Liberal platform is to bolster the ability to support new Made in Canada requirements for manufacturers. While Liberal leader Mark Carney has made commitments to reduce our dependence on U.S. tech giants, to date these have taken the form of procurement requirements rather than regulation of the behaviour of platforms that control important channels of communication and commerce.

The NDP score points with its support for a mandatory grocery code of conduct and support for cooperatives as a competitive alternative in Canada’s food system, but the platform is effectively silent on how an NDP government would defend the interests of Canadians from American firms intertwined with our economy.

Competition as a side-show or no-show in platforms is an issue as Canadians face a monopoly threat on two fronts. From abroad, the digital giants that control much of our communications infrastructure are now in the orbit of an American administration looking to strongarm supposed friends and enemies alike. Within our own borders, our homegrown monopolists are rushing to wrap themselves in the flag while continuing to fleece Canadians across the economy.

To build a more resilient economy and society, Canada will need to move quickly to tame these monopoly threats. Whatever the outcome of Monday’s election, it’s clear there is work to do to ensure elected policy makers understand the monopoly threat that faces Canadians within and without.

📰 CAMP in the News 📰

• ​Google guilty ruling in antitrust case could boost Canada’s lawsuit against tech giant, (Financial Post)

Tariffs Mean the Big Will Get Bigger

While it’s clear businesses around the world are hurting from Trump’s erratic enthusiasm for tariffs, that damage is not spread evenly throughout the economy. In a replay of the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses are much more exposed to this kind of whiplash economic policy than their monopolist counterparts. Big companies like Walmart, Apple, and Albertsons are using their market power to either dodge tariff costs altogether or shift them onto suppliers. Smaller businesses, without political clout or negotiating leverage, are being crushed by higher input costs and disrupted supply chains.

Just as we saw during the pandemic, we should be prepared for firms to exploit tariff-driven uncertainty to pad profits, pushing price hikes onto consumers under the cover of responding to swings in trade policy. Without targeted support for small and medium sized businesses and competition policy to police abuses of market power tariffs will accelerate consolidation and concentration at our expense.

During the pandemic, federal policy makers stepped in to stem a wave of bankruptcies arising from the pandemic, but that support was extended to the oligopolies best able to weather the storm on their own. Canada’s policymakers must learn from the experience of the early days of the pandemic and design responses that prioritize broad-based economic resilience, not just help the biggest incumbents weather the storm.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Ahmari, Gail Slater’s war on monopoly (UnHerd)
• Benedict, “A Lot of Emotion”: The Rocky Marriage of Instagram and Facebook, (Big Tech on Trial)
• ​Commission finds Apple and Meta in breach of the Digital Markets Act, (European Commission)

The Canadian Election Gets Weird On Meta’s Platforms

New reporting from The Logic reveals a disturbing surge in scam political ads on Facebook ahead of Canada’s federal election. With Meta blocking legitimate news under its standoff with the federal government over C-18, disinformation is flooding the platform. Fake news stories, deepfake videos, and doctored images of political leaders are being pumped out by scam networks to mislead voters and promote crypto frauds.

Nearly a quarter of Canadians have seen these fake ads, often styled to impersonate CBC, CTV, or other trusted news sources. Despite promises to crack down, Meta’s enforcement remains reactive and ineffective; and because Facebook dominates social media news distribution, there are few alternative venues for real election information to reach users.

This chaos shows the dangers of monopoly platforms. When a single company controls critical information flows, its policy choices — or negligence — can have outsized impacts on democracy. Canada’s upcoming election highlights the urgent need for stronger competition in digital markets, regulation of critical communication channels, and real consequences for monopolies that fail to meet their responsibilities to the public.

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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