The Competition Bureau isn’t taking a $2.5 billion (U.S.) merger between bedding giant SOMNIGROUP INTERNATIONAL and mattress component maker LEGGETT & PLATT lying down, with the enforcement agency adding it to its list of deal reviews.

Kentucky-based Somnigroup, the world’s largest bedding company, announced the all-stock transaction with Missouri-based Leggett & Platt in April. The combined company will operate 175 manufacturing facilities in 36 countries, with 36,000 employees.

“This combination is consistent with our vertical integration strategy, which drives innovation and value for customers while also enhancing shareholder value,” Somnigroup chairman and chief executive Scott Thompson said in a release at the time.

Somnigroup itself is the product of a series of mergers – bed makers Tempur-Pedic and Sealy in 2012, with retailer Mattress Firm added to the mix in 2025. That second deal was challenged by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on antitrust grounds, but the regulator failed to convince the court that the resulting vertical integration would substantially harm competition.

The company’s influence across the bed industry isn’t sitting well with some retailers, including Nate Cangemi, who owns Golden Dreams Mattress in Carlsbad, Calif. Cangemi has been critical of Somnigroup’s growth in numerous social media posts.

“This level of vertical integration doesn’t just reshape competition, it risks reducing innovation, limiting consumer choice, and destabilizing independent manufacturers who have served our industry for decades,” he wrote on LinkedIn when the Leggett & Platt deal was announced.

“Healthy markets require diversity, transparency, and the ability for smaller, quality-driven companies to compete on merit.”

The Bureau does not comment on active merger reviews, which it automatically initiates when the entity being acquired has $93 million in assets or revenue, or where the combined entity has assets or revenue more than $400 million.

🎧 ON THE PODCAST THIS WEEK:

🛒 GROCERIES & RETAIL

• If you listened to the above podcast on SURVEILLANCE PRICING, Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon’s comments on the subject this week following the federal government’s introduction of legislation to address the issue are definitely of interest. “It’s very easy to say just ban using personal information to give personal pricing, because we have to be super careful that we don’t want to penalize people who are members of a rewards program,” he told the Canadian Press. NDP leader Avi Lewis, who is calling on a full ban, pushed back on that, saying that “Minister Solomon’s comments about reward points are a red herring and they echo misleading talking points used by major retailers who are lobbying to stop a ban on surveillance pricing.”

• The COMPETITION BUREAU is wasting no time putting its new grocery funding to work, with the enforcement agency this week announcing a new investigation into competition across Canada’s food supply chain. The fact-finding project will focus on three key areas: how food is produced and processed, how it moves to retailers across Canada and retail pricing practices including loyalty programs, pricing algorithms, shrinkflation and skimpflation. The Bureau is seeking input from Canadians and organizations with experience in the food supply chain and is accepting comments until July 31, with a final report scheduled for the spring. Along with the Competition Tribunal, the agency got a new 10-year funding injection of $130 million last week from the federal government to investigate and combat anti-competitive practices in the food industry.

• Grocery giant EMPIRE is pushing into so-called discount stores, with a plan to open nearly 100 new locations over the next three years, with three-quarters of those being in the FreshCo brand. The company, which also owns Sobeys and Farm Boy, says the move reflects a growing shift by Canadians toward shopping at stores with cheaper prices. “More than 75 per cent [or our new stores] are going in discount because discount is a white space for us,” chief executive Pierre St-Laurent said during the company’s quarterly earnings call. “We have a lot of room to grow in discount without cannibalization of our network.”

📱 TELECOM

• More job cuts at BELL, with the company this week announcing it was axing nearly 700 workers as part of a reorganization effort. The company said back in the fall that it was looking to find $1.5 billion in costs savings by 2028, which suggests that further cuts could be in the offing. The news follows 4,800 positions eliminated in 2024 and 1,300 in 2023. Also this week, Bell announced a deal with COHERE that will see the AI company use its infrastructure and data centres.

• It’s a good, old-fashioned Canadian standoff with the nation’s Big Three wireless providers locked in a who-will-blink-first showdown with the CRTC over new fees. Last week, as a new law forbidding wireless service activation and modification fees took effect, the regulator sent letters to TELUS and BELL asking the companies to explain why they felt their respective new “device handling” and SIM card charges weren’t in violation of the Telecommunications Act. The companies this week responded with their own letters, with Telus reiterating its belief that a SIM card (the little plastic chip required to connect a phone to a network) is a product separate from prohibited activation fees. Bell also maintains that its handling fee applies to devices that customers have “explicitly chosen” to buy, so it is therefore exempted under the law. ROGERS, meanwhile, didn’t implement a new fee as fast as its cohorts but made up for lost time by introducing three of them: a $40 for device set-up, $25 for shipping and an unspecified SIM card charge. The CRTC sent Rogers a similar letter, threatening possible regulatory action. Telus did not return a query on whether it’s possible for customers to sign up for wireless service with the company without also getting a SIM card and why it therefore considers that SIM card to be an optional purchase. CRTC spokesperson Mirabella Salem says the letters sent by the regulators are the first step in assessing whether the carriers’ fees are compliant with the new rules. “CRTC staff will consider the explanations provided by Bell, Telus and Rogers and will determine whether further, more formal regulatory action is required to ensure compliance with this consumer protection,” she said.

• Hockey Night in Canada is officially leaving CBC starting next season, with NHL rights holder ROGERS moving games exclusively to its own Sportsnet TV channels and streaming service. The cable company first acquired the rights back in 2013 for $5.2 billion, then sub-licensed games to the public broadcaster. But, with Rogers’ new 12-year $11-billion deal beginning next season, the sub-licensing price tag likely got too rich for the CBC, which has been airing hockey games over the air for free for 74 years. While Sportsnet says that CBC hockey viewership is down 70 per cent from 2014, the switch also further cements Rogers’ domination of sports in Canada.

🕺 ENTERTAINMENT

• Rupert Murdoch’s FOX is buying ROKU for $22 billion (U.S.) to create the third-largest player in U.S. television by share of viewing, after YouTube and Netflix, according to the two companies. But the deal also gives Fox and entry point into more than 100 million households worldwide via Roku’s streaming devices – set-top boxes, plug-in sticks and integrated televisions – as well the company’s advertising technology, operating system and content discovery tools. Roku’s platform is home to numerous apps that compete with Fox properties, but the company says it plans to continue allowing them.

• Movie theatre giant CINEPLEX is raising the price of its CineClub membership program to $10.99 a month, up from $9.99. The change was potentially telegraphed during the company’s recent quarterly earnings call, with chief financial officer Gord Nelson telling analysts that he’s expecting 10- to 15-per-cent box office revenue growth for the remainder of this year, and that “part of this would be pricing.”

• Speaking of CINEPLEX, the company could be affected by the latest rumours around NETFLIX reportedly looking to acquire film studio LIONSGATE. The streaming company denies it’s interested, but the studio being in play could affect a deal it signed with Cineplex in 2023. That deal, which The Globe and Mail reported at the time as sending “ripples through [the] Canadian film industry,” moved Cineplex down the road of vertical integration by giving it exclusive distribution rights over Lionsgate’s slate of films, which included the John Wick and Hunger Games franchises.

💾 BIG TECH

• If you need a new phone, computer or other gadget, you may want to buy it as soon as possible. APPLE chief executive Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal this week that imminent price increases for iPhones and other devices are “unavoidable,” thanks to shortages on memory chips that are causing costs to soar. “This is a hundred-year flood,” he told the paper in regards to the cost increases. “I’ve never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years.” This likely isn’t just an Apple thing, because as the company’s prices go, so too do its competitors’.

• The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has drafted a complaint against AMAZON that could lead to a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against the company over allegations that it misled advertisers, according to a Bloomberg report this week. The regulator and multiple state attorneys general are looking into whether Amazon improperly disclosed ad terms and pricing, particularly with “reserve pricing” or the minimum cost that advertisers must accept before they can buy an ad with the company. Neither the FTC nor Amazon are commenting, but the investigation may wrap up as soon as this summer with either a lawsuit or settlement, according to the report.

• Credit card provider AMERICAN EXPRESS is buying online restaurant booking platform TheFork from TRIPADVISOR for $700 million (U.S.), the company announced this week. It’s an odd acquisition on its face, but Amex says that dining is one of the chief avenues for cardholder engagement and TheFork is the leading restaurant reservation platform in Europe, dealing with 50,000 establishments in 11 countries. The credit card company also already owns Resy, a similar reservation platform that caters toward higher-end restaurants in the United States.

🚨 COMING UP

Signing up for a service online is usually really simple, but getting out of it – not so much. Not only does Canada lack protections that allow consumers to easily get out of subscriptions – so-called “click-to-cancel” rules – it’s also behind peer nations in moving to implement them. There’s some light on this horizon, with the CRTC requiring click-to-cancel rules in telecom services starting next year, but other markets are still wide open. TAHIRA DAWOOD, acting general counsel for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre consumer group, joins the Do Not Pass Go podcast on Tuesday to talk about why Canada is behind and why broad click-to-cancel rules are sorely needed.

Bill C-36, the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act, promises to ensure that Canadians’ “personal information is used responsibly, transparently and for appropriate purposes, including to address unfair uses of personal information such as inappropriate surveillance pricing.”

With more than 80 per cent of Canadians wanting a ban or strict regulations on surveillance pricing – where prices for goods and services are individualized based on the data that sellers have about buyers – the government’s move is timely and follows similar action in Manitoba.

But unlike the province’s ban, which was passed in April, critics are already warning that the proposed federal rules don’t go far enough and lack specifics.

The legislation appears to leave room for market segmentation and the preservation of merchants’ ability to offer discounts, which, as we’ll hear in this podcast episode, are hallmarks of a possible slippery slope.

Alec Opperman is a producer and strategist with More Perfect Union, an Emmy-award winning non-profit journalism project in the U.S. He recently produced a video on how surveillance pricing laws are getting watered down and neutered by lobbyists in the United States.

He joins Do Not Pass Go to discuss these cautionary tales, and to highlight the warning signs of supposed bans that are anything but.

Check out More Perfect Union’s video here.

The Chamber of Progress, mentioned in this episode, has critiques of surveillance pricing laws – such as those Maryland tried to enact – on its website.

The federal government this week announced an amibitous $3.2 billion plan to bring grocery costs down by building new infrastructure and competition capacity into Canada’s food system.

The National Food Security Strategy, unveiled by Prime Minister Mark Carney Thursday in Toronto at the Ontario Food Terminal, aims to expand existing distribution facilities and create 20 to 40 new hubs across Canada to offer smaller grocery sellers “a viable alternative to major retail.”

“We are an agricultural superpower, yet for most Canadians, it doesn’t feel like that at the checkout counter,” Carney said. “We’re going to grow more at home, process more at home and feed more Canadians with Canadian food.”

The 10-year plan includes $1 billion for building and expanding food terminals and hubs and a $1-billion Agri-food Project Finance Fund that will provide seed financing for businesses to expand processing capacity. It also includes $750 million to expand year-round domestic production of fruits and vegetables through greenhouses, vertical farms and other indoor growing operations.

Notably, the Competition Bureau and Competition Tribunal are getting $130 million in new funding to investigate and combat anti-competitive business practices in the food industry. That new funding comes as a surprise to some, given that the government initiated 24 job cuts or five per cent of the Bureau’s workforce back in January.

Those cuts are coming largely from support staff, while the new funding looks to be going toward enforcement, according to a source close to the situation.

Consumer advocates are cheering the food strategy as it addresses several layers of competitive problems in the Canadian industry.

“These are important investments in the future of grocery competition in Canada and we’re very glad to see them,” says Keldon Bester, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project.

“Funding to expand the infrastructure that allows independent grocers to compete, as well as additional resources for the Competition Bureau to protect fair competition in the grocery market are both welcome developments.”

Carney is, however, taking some heat over comments he made at the Thursday press conference in regards to household spending on groceries. While noting that grocery prices have risen 35 per cent since 2019, he said the average family of four spends $10,000 a year on groceries or $800 a month.

But, as Dalhousie University food researcher Sylvain Charlebois notes, that number is closer to $17,572, or $1,464 per month.

Writing on his Substack, Charlebois also points out that the government’s announcement isn’t so much a strategy as a “collection of investments,” with little explanation of where all the funding is going to come from.

“The government’s plan is a positive step. It demonstrates that Ottawa is paying attention to food systems in a way it has not for decades,” he says. “But food security cannot be purchased through government spending alone. It is earned through investment, innovation, productivity, and competitiveness.”

Aaron Vansintjan, policy manager at Food Secure Canada, is also cautious in his optimism about the government’s plan. While the development of new food distribution hubs that provide competitive alternatives for smaller grocers – including emerging municipally owned stores – is a positive step forward, he doesn’t see anything in the plan that will prevent profiteering by Canada’s large grocers.

The strategy also isn’t truly national because it doesn’t include income supports for especially needy families, including those with disabilities or children, or provisions for northern Canada, where food prices are exceptionally high.

“It’s a strategy that sees food as a subject of national security, but it doesn’t solve food insecurity,” he says. “I’m happy, but it’s half-assed.”

🎧 ON THE PODCAST THIS WEEK:

🏈 SPORTS & LEISURE

The World Cup is here and with it, continuing sky-high ticket prices. Attempting to get ahead of the, er, game, Ontario this week boosted the penalty for reselling tickets above face value to $25,000 from the previous $10,000, and yet… no one seems to be getting busted, still.

Ontario has also added STUBHUB and SEATGEEK to its Consumer Beware List, which names and shames companies that have not responded after two notifications of consumer complaints or that have been convicted in relation to the Consumer Protection Act or other acts of the ministry.

For their part, the companies say the province has not given them guidance on how they’re supposed to verify the face value of tickets sold on their sites.

“Over the past seven weeks, we have been seeking guidance on key details that are fundamental to compliance, such as what constitutes acceptable proof of a ticket’s original price,” StubHub said on Thursday. “We received partial answers to these questions today and are continuing to work with the Ministry toward full compliance.”

For more on this contentious issue, I reached out to Florian Ederer, a professor of markets, public policy and law at Boston University and an expert on competition and sports ticket resales. Here’s that conversation, edited for length:

What’s the big idea behind banning resale of tickets at a profit?

As soon as you have a very active resale market, you get big differences between what tickets are worth there and what they’re actually selling for in the primary market, and that creates rents.

Once you have these rents, there are incentives for resellers to enter and flood the primary market with ticket requests, which means fans don’t get to buy those tickets and have to go to the resale market.

The resale market often gets the price right and you just have to pay higher prices there. The benefit of buying in a primary market is that these tickets are potentially underpriced, but there’s going to be lots of people who understand that, and therefore you may not get a ticket in the first place.

The resale market creates a better allocation of tickets to those who value them the most, or have the highest willingness to pay.

That’s great if the only objective is to allocate the tickets to the people who are willing to pay the most, but it’s not particularly good if you’re also thinking that there may be other criteria for allocating tickets. You may want tickets to go to real fans or fans that create all the atmosphere in a stadium, or you want them to go to the most dedicated fans of an artist. Once you allow that resale market, it becomes much harder to pursue that second objective.

Even the most deserving fans, when they get tickets for $300 but can resell them for $3,000, might say, “Well, should I really go to the stadium or should I just pocket the profit?”

The other reason you might want to ban resale is that you’re concerned that fans are getting exploited by resellers or the resale market. That’s only the case if there is really a massive underpricing in the primary sales market to begin with.

That hasn’t been the case with FIFA because FIFA has been very aggressive with very high ticket prices in the primary market, including to some games that really do not have all that much demand and willingness to pay.

Going back to those two objectives, different types of events fall on different parts of the spectrum. For the World Cup, there are a lot of people who think the primary objective should not be profit maximization. In fact, FIFA is not a for-profit organization so therefore shouldn’t be maximizing profits in the first place.

If you ban resale entirely, the only people who will want to buy tickets are the people who actually will go to those games, and so then you’re really favouring that second objective, and that’s how it was for a long time. It’s also not too difficult logistically because, if you think about, airlines – there’s also no resale there.

If I buy a ticket on an airline, I can’t just turn around and say, “Oh, well, the flight’s more expensive now, I’m going to resell my ticket to somebody else.” Same thing with ski ticket passes, you can’t just transfer them.

But somehow with concert and sports tickets, we have decided that no, they should be transferable, and that of course leads to a real commercialization and financialization of that.

If a jurisdiction moves to ban the resale of tickets at a profit, what should the results of that be, in theory?

In theory, it should eliminate that resale market entirely. What is more likely to actually happen is that the resale market then becomes much more secret – we’re going into a black market where people are literally standing outside the arena or stadium and they’re just selling the tickets there.

It will also likely decrease the profits of the original seller because now you’ve basically shrunk the demand to only those people who really want to go to the game.

You might say that banning the resale market shouldn’t make any difference to the original seller, right? They would just price tickets accordingly, whatever the market price was before and then do the same thing without the resale market, but that usually does not happen.

Instead, what really does happen is we get a massive reduction in the profits of the resellers and it puts a lot less pressure of finding tickets in the primary market in the first place.

Some people say this is all just supply and demand and should be left alone. How much of it is real demand and how much is just profit seeking? And the $3,000 example you mentioned earlier – if left alone, does that shift sports and concerts to where it’s only rich people going?

Yeah, it is. Imagine if we’re selling tickets at $300, there’s no resale and there’s tons of demand. Only 10 per cent of people will get tickets who actually want them at $300, so you basically turn it into a lottery. In some sense a lottery is more egalitarian, but it doesn’t mean that tickets go to the people who value them the most.

If you have a discriminatory resale market, that always gives tickets to the people who are willing to pay the most. It’s great for whoever is selling them and for everybody who has a high willingness to pay, but it is a much less egalitarian.

Willingness to pay is not necessarily the same thing as the deservingness of going to a game and so that’s obviously tricky.

Some season ticket holders aren’t happy with Ontario’s ban because they say it makes the product less appealing if they can’t recoup some of their expenditure. Does that argument have weight?

Yeah I think that’s absolutely true, and one could say maybe a better policy is we should differentiate between where we ban resale. Maybe we should ban resale on extremely high demand events and maybe less so on season tickets.

But whenever you allow resale, you’re creating this market that is basically pure rent-seeking. It’s just people getting in there to get a piece of that difference between the face value price and the market price.

We might say as a society: Is that really a valuable use of these people’s time? It’s good that they’re generating all this money, but maybe these resellers should be doing other more interesting jobs than transferring money from sellers or consumers to themselves. You could say that there’s just zero societal gain from all of this.

Of course, the resellers might push back and say, “Well, we allow this market to occur, and then that allows better allocation of tickets and better matching of tickets to those who actually value them the most,” and so on, but in essence it’s mostly just people out there trying to get a piece of those rents.

How difficult are such bans to enforce – it appears that Ontario isn’t doing so – and what happens when there’s no enforcement?

We don’t have much experience with real strong enforcement of these bans. We used to have these anti-resale laws in the United States, but it was always looked upon as a cavalier thing. Like, if people do it, it’s bad and they get told off, but nobody ever goes to jail or gets punished.

Once the third-party resale platforms arrived on a big online basis, everybody realized, well, there’s no way of stopping this unless we really massively enforce this and hand out fines. And basically, lawmakers then threw their hands up in the air and said, “No, we’re not going to do this.” And there’s also tons of lobbying from those resale platforms because it’s a huge market.

So do we actually know what happens if one were to enforce these things? No, because it’s never been done. Nobody has really been busted.

It’s not that difficult to enforce, if you were just required to show ID that’s matched to your ticket. Think about airlines – you can’t resell the airline tickets because you have to show up there with your ID.

Here in Ontario, StubHub says the province hasn’t provided guidance on how to prove face value of tickets. With dynamic pricing, it’s actually hard to actually tell what face value is. Is this a legitimate concern from the company?

It’s very easy to just say, “All the tickets are getting sold at $150.” But here, not only do different categories have different prices, but even within categories over time you have price variation. I can see how that would make the enforcement even harder to do.

But again, it’s not that hard. All you need to do is show your original receipt of when you first bought those tickets and what the face value was. I don’t think it’s that hard because they don’t want that law in there in the first place.

📱 TELECOM

• Last month, BELL got smacked down by the CRTC for attempting to get around new rules – which take effect today – that ban service activation and cancellation fees. This week, it was TELUS’s turn. The regulator sent the company a letter urging it to back off a plan to introduce a new charge of up to $25 for new SIM cards, including electronic eSIMs. Just as with Bell last month introducing a $40 “device handling” fee, the CRTC is taking a dim view of Telus’s move. “A SIM card or eSIM is required for the delivery of the wireless service customers are purchasing,” wrote Scott Hutton, vice-president of consumer, analytics and strategy at the regulator. “It would not appear that the SIM purchase fee falls under the exemption considered by the Commission for optional services and products. A fee associated with providing a SIM card or eSIM may be considered to be an activation fee that is prohibited under… the [Telecommunications] Act.” Telus may be sticking with its guns, however, telling the Canadian Press that SIM cards are separate hardware and that eSIMs require “real backend work even though there’s no physical card.” With the now-banned activation fees reaching as high as $80 and cancellation fees amounting to what are likely not insubstantial revenues for the telcos, it’s unlikely they’re going to go down without a fight on this one. The rules, by the way, were made part of the Telecommunications Act in order to eliminate fees that discourage customers from switching providers.

• The CRTC has launched another round of information gathering on cable wholesale internet pricing, which is the access cost that smaller providers such as TEKSAVVY and EXECULINK pay large companies including ROGERS and VIDEOTRON to use parts of of their networks to deliver services to customers. In a letter sent to the relevant parties this week, the regulator asked large network owners to resubmit their wholesale cost estimates, since the existing studies they filed several year ago may now be out of date. “Commission staff notes that the cable carriers submitted their initial… cost studies between June 2023 and April 2024,” the letter says. “However, Commission staff is concerned that the costing information currently on record may no longer reflect the prospective incremental costs of providing these services.” That very much sounds like an invitation to the larger companies to raise their stated costs, which means that wholesale-based ISPs may end up paying them more. That can, in turn, be bad news for consumers, as indie ISPs discipline the prices that large cable companies can charge their own customers. And, according to CRTC figures, up to 40 per cent of Canadian households are still connecting to the internet via cable connections, despite the rise of fibre. What’s potentially more concerning is that the CRTC’s letter is effectively an admission that the regulator has been taking too long to settle this important matter. “It’s the longest-ever process on a mandate to do things faster,” says one ISP executive. “That is troubling.”

• The CRTC has also launched a public consultation on harmonizing the disparate consumer protection codes it oversees. Currently, the regulator maintains separate codes of conducts for internet, cellphone, home phone and television services, and is looking to unite them into one that would be “easier to understand, reduce billing surprises, and help Canadians make informed choices about their communications services” and “create greater consistency for service providers, helping reduce complexity and resolve customer complaints faster.” The CRTC is accepting comments from the public until Aug. 11.

• In case you missed it, not only are telecom complaints out of control – big telcos aren’t properly informing customers about their options when it comes to service and billing disputes:

✈️ AIRLINES

• The federal government this week said it would offer loans to Canada’s airlines to help cover the elevated cost of fuel resulting from the war in Iran. One might expect the companies to welcome this help, but not WESTJET – the country’s second-largest airline “strongly opposes” the offer. “The government faces a choice: continue with costly and market distorting subsidies or build a sustainable future for Canadian aviation,” a spokesperson told CTV. “We’ve seen where this path leads. In 2025 alone, taxpayers lost around $400 million in COVID-19-related airline loans that were forgiven by the federal government. With this, they have been turned into direct taxpayer subsidies to some airlines.” Passenger rights activist Gabor Lukacs doesn’t necessarily disagree, telling Do Not Pass Go that these sorts of subsidies are effectively rewarding airlines that have failed to properly hedge against such risks. “Their execs can have a confidence that the government will bail them out anyway because they are ‘too big to fail,’” he says. “This is not so say that we should necessarily let these airlines go bankrupt per se, however, the current owners and not taxpayers should be bearing the financial consequences of their lack of responsible financial planning and management.” FLAIR, PORTER and AIR TRANSAT did indeed welcome the loan news, while AIR CANADA spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick tells us the company has a “very strong balance sheet built in anticipation of events such as the recent spike in fuel prices and we are able to adapt in response and manage this situation ourselves.”

🕺 ENTERTAINMENT & MEDIA

• Related to the item on concert and sports prices above, Business Insider this week published a piece that effectively lays out the realities of surveillance pricing. Staff at the publication tried to buy the exact same ticket at the exact same time to a recent Yankees-Red Sox baseball game on STUBHUB, only to get five different prices. The $55 pricing range between cheapest and most expensive was largely due to differences in the fees being added to the base ticket, with one staffer on a desktop getting $60 tacked on while another in a different city got only $28. “For consumers, the modern American shopping experience is a constant battle that no one signed up for and no one can win,” the piece concludes.

• And on the topic of surveillance pricing, the WASHINGTON POST is being sued by subscribers for price increases that are based on personal information. Subscribers started seeing renewal notifications starting in March, with offers stating that “this price was set by an algorithm using your personal data.” The suit, filed by Clarkson Law Firm, is seeking class-action status.

• The ongoing PARAMOUNT acquisition of WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY saga continues to turn up new twists and turns, with the company this week accusing NETFLIX of waging a “scorched earth” campaign against it. Paramount says the streaming giant is trying to turn regulators and other stakeholders against it after the company beat out Netflix with its bid to acquire Warner Bros. For its part, Netflix says the accusation is “absurd.” Meanwhile, add the U.K. competition watchdog to the list of entities opposing the $110 billion (U.S.) merger, with the Competition and Markets Authority opening an investigation into the deal that it believes will result in a substantial lessening of competition. Australia and New Zealand, however, are cool with it, with regulators there giving the merger the green light.

At a time when telecom complaints are going through the roof, Canada’s largest service providers have continued to flout rules requiring them to inform customers of the independent ombudsman agency that handles service and billing disputes.

Bell, Rogers and Telus were only partially compliant with the requirements in 2025, according to an annual report card by the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services, releasing Wednesday.

This year’s report, which audited 37 service providers’ websites last year, shows that only 12 were fully compliant at the outset - including Bell Aliant, Bell MTS and Lucky Mobile, as well as Chatr and Comwave, but notably not their respective parents, Bell and Rogers. Telus and its Public Mobile subsidiary were fully in line, but not Koodo or the company’s other sub-brands.

Rogers and Bell were also not listed as fully compliant in last year’s CCTS report card, nor was Koodo. Rogers and Bell did not respond to requests for comment.

Telus spokesperson Brandi Merker said the Koodo website was substantially compliant in 2025 and that the CCTS questioned additional text that appeared when required search terms was entered into our website. “While the correct information and link to the CCTS appeared, we removed any additional information that also showed up alongside it in January.”

The CCTS requires service providers to have a complaint-handling webpage that gives customers information about their own internal dispute systems, as well as pointers to the federal agency. Their websites must also be searchable and easily turn up results when keywords relating to “CCTS” and “complaints” are entered.

This year’s report found that only 24 of the 37 websites had a search function at all, while half did not return results on those two search terms. Further, half of the sites also had more than one complaints-handling page, with only one listing CCTS information.

“This frustrates the [CCTS’] Public Awareness Plan objective because it fragments information available to customers,” the report says. “Customers who are trying to navigate provider websites to understand their options when they have a concern may not be provided with information about the CCTS.”

Complaints accepted by the agency have exploded in recent years, hitting a new record of 23,647 for the year ended July 31, 2025. That was up 17 per cent from a year earlier and the third new annual record in a row.

The latest half-year results, up to Jan. 31, show this increase is accelerating, with complaints for the six-month period at 19,157, up 61 per cent over a year earlier. Rogers led the pack with a 95-per-cent increase in complaints.

The CCTS, which is overseen by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, does not have the ability to impose penalties on service providers, other than to publicly name and shame them for non-compliance.

“We don’t have any authority to punish or fine service providers for not following these rules,” assistant commissioner Janet Lo told Do Not Pass Go. “The public can make choices with what they want to do with this information.”

Last year’s report card audited 65 service providers. Lo confirmed that the lower number covered this year reflects the CCTS’s available resources, which have been stretched in handling the rising tide of complaints.

The organization may soon experience further spikes in billing and contract disputes as new CRTC rules banning activation and termination fees come into effect on June 12.

“Our service is available if the customer requires a second look by an independent agency, but we really do encourage customers to navigate these new rules with their service providers,” Lo said. “It will require more resources if volumes continue to increase.”

The CRTC has regularly found that service providers aren’t doing enough to inform consumers of their options through the ombudsman. The regulator launched a public proceeding in October on how to raise public awareness of the CCTS, but paused it a month later after large telcos complained about how it was happening alongside the regulator’s efforts to harmonize the various consumer protection codes that exist across different services.

The CRTC revived the consultation in April, with proposals from interested parties due by July 23.

This year’s compliance report comes on the heels of the federal government moving to shut down the Office of Consumer Affairs (OCA), along with its Canadian Consumer Protection Initiative, which funds advocacy group projects ranging from fraud protection for seniors to junk fee tracking.

A spokesperson for Innovation, Science and Economic Development, which oversees the OCA, told Do Not Pass Go at the time that several federal departments and agencies – including the CRTC – would continue to provide consumer protection despite the cuts.

The CCTS is funded by service providers through annual contributions based on their revenues, plus amounts based on the number and complexity of complaints they generate.

The other providers listed in this year’s report as being fully complaint with the awareness rules are Cogeco and its Oxio subsidiary, Videotron and its Fizz brand, and TekSavvy.

Four smaller service providers are listed as non-complaint and failing to respond to requests to rectify the problems: Netfox Communications, Poynt360, TeleMart and TNext Communications.

But with so many Canadians struggling just to make ends meet – when many are working multiple jobs and have precious little time or energy to devote to anything other than the basic necessities of life – the better question might be: Who can do something about monopolies and oligopolies?

It’s known as “demographic availability,” or the privilege of protest – where only a certain well-resourced group of people are able to take action, whatever form it takes.

It’s an ironic situation because it means that those who are most affected by economic concentration are often the least able to resist it directly, which gives rise to the question: Does that put more of the onus to do so on those with more resources and discretionary time?

Stephen Gasteyer is an associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University who has written about activism and demographic availability. He joins the Do Not Pass Go podcast to discuss the privilege of protest, the different forms of economic resistance and whether society’s more resourced members have a heightened responsibility to engage in it.

My apologies for getting this week’s competition news roundup out a few days late, but I was on vacation… so I had a good excuse! But, as they say in the biz, the news never takes a break – and wow, was that ever true this week. Let’s get to it!

GURU ORGANIC ENERGY is accusing PEPSICO of abusing its dominance of the beverage market in a filing with Canada’s competition court. The application doubles down on a similar civil lawsuit launched by the Montreal-based energy drink maker in April.

Guru is seeking the full benefit derived by PepsiCo from its alleged abuse in the amount of $15 million or whatever sum the Competition Tribunal deems appropriate, if the court agrees to hear its case, according to the company’s notice of application.

The application itself has not yet been posted publicly and lawyers for Guru could not be reached on the weekend, but the notice refers to arguments in the company’s concurrent civil case.

In that lawsuit, Guru alleges that Pepsi violated a distribution agreement the two companies signed in 2021. Pepsi was to be its exclusive distributor for the next 10 years, but the soft drink giant terminated the deal “without cause” as of May 2025, forcing Guru back to direct distribution, according to the company.

Guru is also seeking $15 million in damages in its civil suit, plus profits Pepsi derived from selling an allegedly copied product, and $164,753 in outstanding receivables.

Guru says Pepsi used existing shelf space it had developed with retailers to instead expand the presence of its own offerings, which included copies of Guru products. In the lawsuit, the company says Pepsi began selling “Rockstar Island Bliss” shortly after Guru disclosed specifications of its own “Island Breeze” drink to the distributor.

“When we entered into our agreement with Pepsi’s Canadian distribution arm in 2021, we did so in good faith and invested significantly in the partnership,” said Guru president and chief executive Carl Goyette in a release at the time. “Filing this claim is a matter of defending shareholder value on a set of issues we have attempted to resolve privately.”

In the civil suit, the company said it would file an abuse-of-dominance application with the Tribunal to investigate the alleged use of shelf allocation to disadvantage independent competing brands in favour of Pepsi-owned and -affiliated products.

“Guru believes that the conduct described in its statement of claim raises issues of broader public interest warranting regulatory review.”

Pepsi, for its part, also filed a civil claim in April, seeking approximately $4.4 million for post-termination payables. The company could not be reached for comment.

🎧 ON THE PODCAST THIS WEEK:

💾 BIG TECH

• The big news of the week was the federal government’s introduction of a national AI STRATEGY, and there has certainly been no lack of commentary on it. From the founders of COHERE calling it “an incredible step forward” to opposition politicians saying it lacks safety provisions, reactions are running the gamut. If there’s a common thread through much of the analysis, it’s that the “AI for All” document is big on the ambition of making Canada a leader in the field but short on details on how it’s going to happen. We’ll get into it further in the weeks ahead but, for what it’s worth in these parts for now, the strategy does make a point of acknowledging AI’s importance in enabling and supporting competition.

• The cloud computing market is highly concentrated, which poses both competitive and sovereignty threats to Canada, according to a new paper from the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project. Three U.S. companies – AMAZON, MICROSOFT and ALPHABET – control 85 per cent of the Canadian market, which will inevitably lead to lock-in through proprietary technologies, opaque and complex billing, bundling and tying, and the foreclosure of adjacent markets including AI. “A country locked into a small number of providers lacks meaningful choice, whether the threat is coercion by a foreign government or rent extraction by an uncontested monopolist,” the paper says. The organization recommends the federal government require interoperability and portability certifications in all its cloud procurement deals and that it attach similar conditions to any domestic cloud investment programs to avoid entrenching new domestic monopolies. CAMP also suggests that the government insist on removing digital market regulation constraints as it negotiates the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement this summer.

• The Competition Tribunal has handed another defeat to GOOGLE as it defends an ongoing monopoly case brought by the Competition Bureau. Justice Andrew Little this week ordered the search giant to pay more than $358,000 in legal costs relating to a motion it brought that sought to scuttle the Bureau’s case against it, which alleges that the company is abusing its dominance of the online ad and search markets in Canada. Google had argued that the potential damages in the case, which could be in the tens of billions of dollars, were a “true penal consequence” that therefore qualified it as a criminal rather than civil proceeding, in which case the company was due protections under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Little rejected those arguments in March. The Bureau had been seeking costs of more than $370,000. The trial is expected to begin in January 2027.

• The heat over the federal government’s Bill C-22, also known as the LAWFUL ACCESS bill, continues to build with a number of smaller competitor tech companies threatening to pull out of Canada if the legislation is enacted as written. Messaging provider SIGNAL and search engine DUCKDUCKGO have both indicated that they would rather not offer services to Canadians at all than do so while also providing law enforcement with encryption back-doors. “In its current form, Bill C-22 would convert the everyday tools Canadians rely on into a sprawling, insecure surveillance apparatus,” Udbhav Tiwari, Signal’s vice-president of strategy and global affairs, told the House of Commons public safety committee this week. “If we are ever forced to choose between betraying the people who rely on us and leaving a market, we will leave.” DuckDuckGo, an erstwhile search competitor to Google, meanwhile, says it will pull its virtual private network offering from Canada if Bill C-22 becomes law.

• Remember when MICROSOFT was the U.S. government’s biggest antitrust target? Well, everything that’s old may be new again as the company appears to be in the crosshairs again. The Federal Trade Commission is reportedly gathering business agreements, licensing arrangements and interoperability information from companies that do cloud services and AI deals with the tech giant. Microsoft insists there’s plenty of competition in those businesses, but its practices are drawing considerable attention from enforcement agencies – not just in the U.S., but also in Europe, the U.K. and Japan.

• And speaking of MICROSOFT antitrust cases of yore, everything old really is new again as a consortium of competing web browser makers have penned an open letter to say “enough is enough” in response to how the company is apparently favouring its own software. “Microsoft leverages its immensely powerful position as the supplier of the ubiquitous Windows PC operating system, as well as many productivity and other must-have apps, to push users towards its first-party browser, Edge, through tactics that restrict, distort, and subvert user choice,” says the letter from the Browser Choice Alliance, which counts GOOGLE Chrome, OPERA and MIDORI among its members. The group says Microsoft needs to allow third parties to compete for pre-installation and default deals with Windows PC makers, bring back the ability for users to easily switch default browsers, and stop using operating system updates to push users back to Edge, among other measures.

• And also on the topic of alternative browsers, DUCKDUCKGO – of several-items-above fame – says its demand is exploding as web users look for for ways to surf the web without drowning in AI slop. The company says results on its no-AI search page were up nearly 30 per cent week-over-week, while its U.S. app installs also rose 18 per cent. The growth in interest was certainly sparked by GOOGLE’s recent announcement that it intends to prioritize AI results over its traditional search through its engine and Chrome browser.

🕺 ENTERTAINMENT

• The other big news of the week was the federal government’s reversal on the ONLINE STREAMING ACT. Culture Minister Marc Miller on Wednesday told the CRTC to rethink its recent implementation of the legislation that would have required streaming companies including NETFLIX, AMAZON and APPLE to pay 15 per cent of their Canadian revenues into funds that would help fund the production of Canadian TV shows and movies. Citing the likelihood of those companies passing on the fees to customers in the form of price hikes – and perhaps not as openly admitting that the scheme was proving to be a major irritant to the United States at a time when Canada is trying to negotiate a new trade deal – Miller announced that content producers would instead be getting $600 million in new annual government funding. While some producers welcomed the funding, others were vocal in their displeasure at letting the streaming companies off the hook. The Canadian Media Producers Association, for example, pointed out that the streaming companies have consistently and frequently raised prices since entering Canada, and that “this will continue regardless of any government action.”

• The Ontario government is raising the maximum fine on scalpers for selling tickets above face value to $25,000 per offence, from $10,000, starting June 10. That’s cool and all, but given that tickets for everything from concerts to Blue Jays games to World Cup soccer matches continue to sell on STUBHUB at massively inflated costs, there appears to be zero enforcement so far. Worse still, City of Toronto officials bragged over the weekend that they have sold most of the 3,546 World Cup tickets they bought last year as “a revenue generation strategy.”

• Gabe Newell, founder and president of VALVE, denies that his company’s Steam platform is a monopoly in online games. “Customers have enormous choice,” he said in defence of his company and an ongoing U.S. antitrust lawsuit against it. The problem, according to the independent studios that brought the lawsuit in 2021, isn’t with customers’ choices but rather that Steam – the dominant online games platform – allegedly forbids them from selling their products at lower prices on other platforms. This “most-favoured nation” setup is driving up the price of games and fees for developers and studios, according to the lawsuit. According to a new Bloomberg report on previously unreported conversations between Newell and some of the studios, the Valve founder denied that such clauses existed even when presented with internal communications in which company employees appeared to be enforcing the rule. A similar case is underway in the U.K. as well.

• Fresh off their antitrust win over Live Nation, several U.S. states including California, New York and Colorado are considering a lawsuit to block PARAMOUNT’s takeover of WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY. The states believe the $111-billion (U.S.) merger will result in job losses, lower wages and fewer films and TV shows being produced.

🛒 GROCERIES & RETAIL

• We started above with the federal government’s AI strategy, so we may as well end with it here. The Toronto Star notes that the 50-page document released this week contains a line that promises to tackle SURVEILLANCE PRICING – where merchants utilize customer data to set personalized prices – but, as per much of the rest of the strategy, there’s little beyond that. “Canada will also strengthen its privacy laws to ensure that Canadians’ personal information is not used inappropriately, including for surveillance pricing,” the strategy paper says. NDP leader Avi Lewis, who recently called on a nationwide surveillance pricing ban, tells the paper that it appears to be an afterthought to the government. “They haven’t committed to banning the practice,” he said. “They committed to dealing with this by protecting Canadians’ privacy, so those are different things.”

🚨 COMING UP

Is the ability to protest – whether politically or economically – a privilege reserved only for a certain class of people? STEPHEN GASTEYER, an associate professor of sociology and expert on protests at Michigan State University, joins the Do Not Pass Go podcast this Tuesday to discuss why those people affected most by oligopolies often have the least ability to do something about it – and how it’s therefore doubly important for the people with privilege to take action.

Sometimes the deals are legitimate, but often they’re fake discounts meant to mislead consumers into thinking they’re getting a bargain.

These fake discounts aren’t just marketing gimmicks, they’re illegal – running afoul of Canada’s “ordinary selling price” laws, which require listed regular prices to be legitimate. Products must genuinely be sold at the regular price for either a certain length of time or a specified volume of overall sales.

The laws are meant to protect consumers from deceptive advertising and to keep merchants honest, but they’re routinely violated because the practice works. Psychological studies show that the promise of a bargain, real or not, makes people more likely to buy what’s being offered.

The practice is already difficult enough for enforcers to detect and stop, so what happens when algorithms and artificial intelligence are added to the equation? What constitutes an “ordinary selling price” and a discount when dynamic pricing means costs for products and services can change every few seconds?

These are questions raised in a new paper by Matthew Chiasson, a senior policy advisor for the Competition Bureau, who believes it’s the first attempt to address the issue in an academic context.

Chiasson previously appeared on the Do Not Pass Go podcast to discuss how large companies were weaponizing regulations to stifle competition. He joins us again to talk about what’s a real discount in a world where the price of everything is increasingly fluid.

Check out his paper here.

The battle over airline complaints is heating up, with a Bloc Québécois MP and passenger advocates this week calling out the federal government’s plan to change the heavily backlogged system as “illusory” and “highly problematic.”

Federal Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon earlier this month announced that complaint resolution is going to move to third-party organizations chosen by the government in order to speed up resolutions. The Canadian Transportation Agency currently handles disputes, but its backlog is approaching 100,000 and many complaints are taking up to three years to resolve.

On Monday, Bloc Québécois Member of Parliament and Transport Committee vice-chair Xavier Barsalou-Duval held a press conference with Jacob Charbonneau, chief executive of Flight Claim, and Gabor Lukacs, president of Air Passenger Rights. The trio criticized the government’s plan and accused it of allowing Canada’s airlines to set complaint resolution terms that will be favourable to them.

In an interview with Do Not Pass Go, Barsalou-Duval said the third-party system is strikingly similar to one announced by Air Canada in April, where the airline is testing complaint resolution with 500 random passengers through Canada Aviation Dispute Resolution, a subsidiary of U.K.-based CDRL Group.

“It’s a dangerous situation, they could have written the bill,” he said, referring to Bill C-31, which contains the government’s proposed plan. “It’s really problematic when an airline knows what’s coming and puts it in place before it’s even tabled in the House [of Commons].”

For its part, Air Canada told the Toronto Star this week that it has kept officials informed of its dispute resolution experiment, but that the government was designing its own reforms.

Barsalou-Duval added that MacKinnon this week refused his call to refer the complaints plan to the Transport Committee for proper study and discussion.

“This is a unilateral implementation of a regime that is not under CTA supervision,” he said. “I see this as highly problematic.”

At the press conference on Monday, Lukacs said the government’s plan is “unprecedented in the Western world” as it hands disproportionate power to the airlines through hand-picked third-party arbitrators.

The dispute system would also lock passengers into legally-binding rulings, which is out of step with peer countries. Europe’s alternative dispute resolution system, for example, allows passengers to reject outcomes and pursue legal action.

“Canada’s own telecommunication complaint system similarly lacks binding authority over consumers,” he said, referring to the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services, whose decisions can be rejected by consumers.

Lukacs said the cause of the backlog is the government’s unwillingness to impose significant fines on airlines that violate passenger rights as well as its refusal to adopt the European Union’s “gold standard” of protections, which can quickly determine eligibility for compensation using publicly available data rather than hundreds of pages of documents and lengthy adjudication.

Passenger complaints in Europe are resolved in minutes, he said, while the average case in Canada requires a full day, hence the backlog.

“They have mud on their face because the public is asking lots of questions,” Lukacs told Do Not Pass Go. “They’re not helping passengers and they don’t have much understanding about the harm that they’re doing.”

In an emailed statement, MacKinnon reiterated that the change was being made to clear complaints the backlog and speed up resolutions.

“We examined models that are working successfully in other jurisdictions, where independent dispute resolution is delivering faster and fairer outcomes for travellers. Our approach adapts those proven best practices to the Canadian context, while maintaining strong oversight by Transport Canada,” he said.

“Any organization involved will have to meet strict accreditation standards, including protections for official languages, safeguards to ensure independence from airline influence, and clear national service requirements. These reforms are about restoring confidence in the system by delivering a process that is faster, fairer, more transparent, and more accountable for Canadians.”

🎧 ON THE PODCAST THIS WEEK:

🛒 GROCERIES & RETAIL

• It’s funny what a little competition – or even the threat of it – can do. This week, TIM HORTONS said it was looking to recruit 10,000 new employees – except this time, they’re going to be local as opposed to temporary foreign workers (TFW). As commentators have pointed out, the donut chain has long lobbied for the expansion of TFW worker numbers, citing a lack of local options. But lo and behold, the chain has now switched gears shortly after U.S. chain DUNKIN announced its plan to re-enter the Canadian market. As National Post columnist Chris Selley points out, Canada needs more of this sort of competition – perhaps even in markets such as telecoms and airlines.

• Thanks to a poll back in March, we know that the majority of Canadians want SURVEILLANCE PRICING – where merchants sell goods and services based on what they know about consumers – to be banned. A similar survey in the United States this week suggests that Americans may be even more concerned about the phenomenon. Nearly 70 per cent of respondents believe that surveillance pricing will raise the cost of goods while only 5 per cent think it will lower them. Nearly 60 per cent also said they won’t shop in stores that have digital price tags.

• Back in January, MCDONALD’S Canadian operation surprised the fast-food world with a “one-year price promise” on its McValue series of meals. The chain announced it was locking the price of the meals at $5, an unexpected development given continuing food inflation and global economic turmoil, but one that was driven by “the company’s dedication to delivering reliable value at a time when Canadians are navigating rising costs.” As an occasional partaker of these McValue meals, I was therefore surprised last week to see my local restaurant had quietly raised the price to $5.10, which seemed to run counter to the price-lock declaration. The store manager explained that corporate-owned stores are bound by the price promise, but franchisees – like the location in question – had leeway to adjust by 10 to 30 cents. That didn’t seem to be the case after checking with McDonald’s media relations, who confirmed that the restaurant went rogue. “McDonald’s franchisees are independent business owners and, in most cases, set their own prices at the restaurant level. That said, the $5 McValue Meal is a nationally advertised offer, and pricing should be consistent with that positioning,” a spokesperson said in an email. “We’ve looked into the specific restaurant you referenced and it appears this was an error that has since been corrected.” I went back and checked and the price is now indeed back to $5. Has anyone else spotted a rogue McDonald’s? Let us know:

🩺 HEALTH

• Remember when we marvelled at the effects of competition just a few paragraphs ago? In another good example, Danish drug maker NOVO NORDISK this week announced that it is slashing the price of Ozempic in Canada to better compete with the arrival of generic versions. The drug, known as a GLP-1 agonist, is used to treat diabetes and for weight loss. Health Canada earlier this month approved two versions of a generic semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, which is also made by Novo Nordisk.

🥊 COMPETITION

• Canada’s job market is undergoing a significant structural change that is making it harder to set monetary policy, according to Nicolas Vincent, external deputy governor for the BANK OF CANADA. Vincent told a Montreal think tank this week that ongoing slowness in the labour market could lead to lasting damage for workers’ prospects and affect the Bank’s ability to make decisions on issues such as interest rates. In relation to the Tim Hortons item above, he noted that high immigration rates between 2022 and 2024 increased the competition for lower-skill and entry-level jobs, which ultimately made it hard for young people to find work. In a larger sense, economic uncertainty has created a “low-hire, low-fire” situation where workers aren’t moving as much from less productive sectors to more productive ones.

• In case you missed it, we broke the story this week that the federal government is axing the OFFICE OF CONSUMER AFFAIRS and the projects its supports. Numerous consumer advocacy groups are affected, as well as initiatives that range from protecting seniors from fraud and junk fee tracking to food affordability and digital privacy rights:

💾 BIG TECH

• Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon is more concerned about Canada creating large AI companies than he is about making them monopolies. Speaking at an event hosted by Betakit this week, he said that Canadian firms such as COHERE and XANADU – who have been singled out by the federal government as national champions and awarded subsidies and tax incentives – need that help to compete against U.S. giants. “They’re competing against OpenAI and Anthropic,” he said. “They are running with some big dogs, and you can fail quick.”

• GOOGLE is appealing a 2024 ruling in which a U.S. court found the company to be a monopoly in search. The company says the judge made legal errors in the case, which revolved around Google stifling competition by paying billions of dollars to make its search engine the default on APPLE devices. The company escaped an order that would have broken it up last year, but it was ordered to share some data with its competitors. A similar Canadian case was dismissed by the Competition Tribunal in January.

📱 TELECOM

• Former Industry Minister and ROGERS executive Navdeep Bains has officially entered the race for leadership of the Ontario Liberal party. Bains’ move, which was widely expected, comes after the party rejected a complaint by Nate Erskine-Smith, the current federal Liberal Member of Parliament for Beaches–East York, regarding a recent candidacy vote in the provincial riding of Scarborough Southwest. Erskine-Smith, who was aiming to become the Liberal candidate for the riding in an upcoming by-election, raised concerns of irregularities during the voting process. Bains joins current provincial caucus member Lee Fairclough, political strategist Dylan Marando and Ajax Member of Provincial Parliament Rob Cerjanec as declared leadership candidates so far.

🏦 BANKING

• Claim filings for a class-action lawsuit involving CIBC and RENAISSANCE INVESTMENTS are now open, with the Ontario Superior Court approving an $11 million settlement involving the two companies’ mutual funds operations. Customers who held units in either mutual fund trusts at any time before Sept. 5, 2025, are eligible for payouts, with filings accepted until Nov. 18.

• Toronto-based cryptocurrency firm WONDERFI says it has the regulatory go-ahead to be acquired by California-based financial services provider ROBINHOOD. The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization has approved the deal, which is expected to close on June 1. WonderFi owns several Canadian crypto trading platforms, as well as stock trading and prediction market options. The $250 million (U.S.) deal was announced just over a year ago.

🚜 FARMING

• The two largest JOHN DEERE farm equipment dealers in Manitoba have called off their merger, citing “considerable roadblocks and delays” from the Competition Bureau. GREENVALLEY EQUIPMENT and ENNS BROTHERS announced their plan to merge in January, though the Bureau’s merger review listings show the transaction as “abandoned” as of May 1. The Bureau typically does not provide additional information on mergers it reviews.

🛢️ RESOURCES

• Speaking of merger reviews, the Competition Bureau is also having a look at EQUINOX GOLD’s bid for fellow Vancouver-based company ORLA MINING. The $7 billion deal would create Canada’s second-largest gold producer, after AGNICO EAGLE MINES, with acquired properties in Ontario, Nevada, Mexico and Panama joining Equinox’s existing assets in Ontario and Newfoundland. The deal is code-named “Project Kismet,” because the companies believe they are fated to be together, Equinox’s chief executive Darren Hall told The Globe and Mail.

🚨 COMING UP

When is a discount real and when is it fake? And what happens when you add algorithms and surveillance pricing to the equation? Advertising a discount on a fake regular price is illegal in Canada, contravening what’s known as “ordinary selling price” rules under the Competition Act. MATTHEW CHIASSON, a senior policy advisor at the Competition Bureau, returns to the Do Not Pass Go podcast on Tuesday to discuss his new paper, which is the first to question how regular prices are set and governed in a world where they can change by the second.

The federal government is taking an axe to consumer protection in Canada with a shutdown of the Office of Consumer Affairs (OCA) and the projects it funds.

The slashing, which eliminates projects under the OCA’s Canadian Consumer Protection Initiative (CCPI), is part of the comprehensive expenditure review announced by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne during last fall’s budget.

“Difficult decisions have been required to ensure that resources are directed toward primary priorities, while delivering programs more efficiently and effectively,” wrote Etienne-René Massie, assistant deputy minister of small business, tourism and marketplace services, in an email sent to consumer advocacy groups on Thursday that was obtained by Do Not Pass Go.

“In this context, some non-legislative and non-regulatory consumer-related functions will be impacted. This includes the CCPI and the Office of Consumer Affairs, its programs and initiatives which will be wound down by March 31, 2027.”

Numerous consumer groups – including the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, the Consumers Council of Canada, Consumers' Association of Canada (Manitoba) and Union des consommateurs – will be negatively affected by the decision.

PIAC, for example, was awarded more than $285,000 for consumer awareness and organizational development projects spanning 2025 to 2027 under the CCPI, while the Consumers Council was similarly granted nearly $500,000 for the same period.

In total, the CCPI awarded more than $7.3 million to consumer groups in its latest award period for initiatives ranging from protecting seniors from fraud and junk fee tracking to food affordability and digital privacy rights.

Current projects will continue to be funded, but will have to be completed by the shutdown date in March.

“We understand that this news may present challenges for some of you, and we want to reiterate that the Government of Canada continues to recognize the importance of consumer protection and the vital role that consumer groups play in supporting and advocating for Canadian consumers,” Massie wrote.

The shutdown follows January job cuts at the Competition Bureau, with 24 positions being eliminated over the next three years.

A spokesperson for Innovation, Science and Economic Development, which governs both the OCA and Bureau, said the shutdown will affect six employees and result in a costs savings of $2.6 million per year by 2028-2029. The spokesperson added that federal and provincial agencies such as the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada and the CRTC will continue to provide protection for Canadian consumers.

“This decision was made because consumer protection falls under the jurisdiction of several departments and agencies, based on their respective mandates and jurisdictions, providing a range of protection for consumers,” she said in an email. “The government is ensuring more contestable markets, prohibiting deceptive marketing and strengthening consumer transparency by supporting the work of the Competition Bureau.”

Consumer advocacy groups blasted the news as short-sighted and another sign that the federal government is continuing to move away from supporting consumer protection and competition.

“The amount of spending in this area by the government is negligible to begin with so this can’t be seen as making a difference to the bottom line,” said Neil Hartung, a lawyer with the Consumers Council of Canada.

“If you disempower consumer voices, you’re going to get the market that you deserve. And that’s already on the tread line to consumers being marginalized.”

The $49.11 deposits, being paid out to those who registered for the lawsuit, are a drop in the bucket compared to what the scandal has cumulatively cost Canadian households – and a reminder of the big competitive problems plaguing the industry.

For 15 years, Loblaw and its fellow large grocers – including Metro, Sobeys, Walmart and Giant Tiger – conspired to raise the price of bread. While Loblaw is finally paying something for its role in the cartel, the public is in the dark as to what – if anything – is happening with the other participants.

Worse still, what little is known about the scandal suggests that price-fixing on other products may be happening and the chains themselves haven’t changed their behaviour, if the string of continuing controversies is anything to go by.

Keldon Bester, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, says strong action is needed by all levels of government to shed more light on the various ways in which the nation’s large grocers are colluding and preventing competition in the sector.

He joins Do Not Pass Go this week to discuss why the current payouts are good news for consumers, but also to explain why Canada’s approach to fixing the industry’s structural problems isn’t even half-baked.

Check out the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project here.

Hello to all our new subscribers this week! Thank you for coming on board… be sure to kick off your shoes and makes yourselves at home. I hope you like what you see, and if you do, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the work we’re doing here.

We’ve admittedly been a little quiet on the breaking news front of late, but that’s because I’ve been busy working on some behind-the-scenes business plumbing. Lots of exciting news coming on this front very soon – and of course, lots of good scoops coming too!

In the meantime, let’s get to this week’s competition news roundup…

The CRTC released another big decision this week that, as per usual, isn’t likely to win many fans beyond Canada’s big telecom companies.

On Thursday, the regulator finally unveiled rules to go with the Online Streaming Act, passed by the Trudeau government in 2023, which map out how U.S. streaming companies are to contribute to Canadian content.

In a nutshell, the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Apple will now be required to contribute 15 per cent of their revenues in Canada to the creation of Canadian movies, television and local news, up from the interim 5 per cent previously set by the CRTC.

At the same time, traditional Canadian broadcasters such as CTV and CityTV, owned by Bell and Rogers respectively, are seeing their CanCon contribution requirements lowered to 25 per cent, from a range of between 30 and 45 per cent.

Portions of the streamers’ funding will also go to “enhanced partnerships” that will require them to co-produce content where the majority of the copyright will be held by a Canadian company.

This partial levelling of the field – which the CRTC calls “recalibrating” – will result in CanCon funding of about $2 billion a year, according to the regulator.

To say that sparks are already flying would be an understatement. The major streaming platforms, which in 2024 launched a court challenge of the interim 5-per-cent levy, wasted no time in blasting Thursday’s decision.

The ruling is “unprecedented, unnecessary and discriminatory” and violates Canada’s obligations under the United States Mexico Canada Agreement, according to the Motion Picture Association, which represents Netflix, Disney, Sony, Universal and others. “We urge the Canadian government to reconsider this approach.”

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist, a long-time critic of the Online News Act, says the 15-per-cent requirement makes Canada “among the most expensive operating jurisdictions in the world for streaming services, with consequences that will undoubtedly affect consumer streaming prices.” Europe, for example, has funding requirements ranging from 0.5 per of local revenues to 6 per cent.

As former CRTC commissioner and fellow long-time Online News Act critic Peter Menzies points out, Culture Minister Marc Miller is already signalling that the government might reject the decision:

There’s a lot more intrigue surrounding this ruling besides the above. For one thing, there’s the length of time it took.

After the Online News Act took effect in June 2023, CRTC chair Vicky Eatrides said she expected to have the regulations around it implemented by the end of 2024. With no rules in sight, Miller last month admonished the regulator for taking so long, saying that he was “disappointed that the CRTC is not moving faster to fully implement the Online Streaming Act, a law that ensures online streamers pay their fair share.”

This tardiness is de rigueur for the CRTC, with several key telecom decisions also taking excessively long – as we’ve noted here before, independent internet providers have been waiting years for the final wholesale access rates that are integral to their business.

It’s a fair question then, to wonder just what the heck is going on with the CRTC, which is exactly what the Canadian Internet Society said back in March when it called for an overhaul of the regulator.

There are also the sovereignty and trade aspects to this decision. While the government and the CRTC have both touted the Online Streaming Act as an important tool in building and maintaining Canada’s cultural sovereignty, it’s also serving as a major irritant in larger trade negotiations with the United States.

That friction was squarely behind Prime Minister Mark Carney’s quick scrapping of the Digital Services Tax last year, which would have raised streaming costs for consumers.

As Geist points out, the government is sending what can charitably be referred to as confusing signals here. On the one hand, the feds are demanding that U.S. streamers pay their fair share and they’re chiding the sluggish CRTC, while at the same time they’re also bending to trade threats and possible consumer blowback.

To reiterate the point off the top, the only ones who are likely to be happy with this decision are Canada’s big combo telecom-broadcasters, who have been lobbying to pay less into CanCon production since time immemorial.

That said, they’re probably still mad because their required contributions haven’t been reduced to zero.

🎧 ON THE PODCAST THIS WEEK:

🕺 ENTERTAINMENT

• Mississauga, Ont.-based IMAX may be up for sale, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The large-format film company has had preliminary talks with buyers through intermediaries, though no official pitches have been made. IMAX is on fire lately, with its large-format films posting a record $1.28 billion (U.S.) at the box office last year, up 40 per cent over a year earlier. CNBC pegs private equity as perhaps the likeliest buyer, since there would be no apparent competition issues – like those the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal is mired in. Netflix, Apple and Sony could also be candidates.

• The 33 U.S. states that successfully won their antitrust trial against LIVE NATION last month are asking courts to break up the company and order compensation for fans as part of the punishment phase of the ongoing case. The plaintiffs want TICKETMASTER spun off, with tight controls on how that company could then interact with its former parent. The states also want details of Live Nation’s controversial settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, which originally brought the antitrust case, to be made public. For its part, the company wants last month’s ruling thrown out in favour of a new trial. Live Nation says the jury ignored evidence and made errors when it found that it illegally coerced artists and venues into using Ticketmaster.

🏈 SPORTS & LEISURE

• Is the duopolized North American ski business under-investing in its resorts? Yes, according to a study by YouTuber SnowStash, who found that operators in the four major European ski countries – Italy, France, Austria and Switzerland – spent $1.09 billion (U.S.) on new lift installations during the 2025/26 season while their counterparts in the United States and Canada spent just $317 million combined. The biggest culprit in this under-investment, according to SnowStash, is Colorado-based VAIL RESORTS, which spent $225 million on capital investments while returning $595 million to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. Privately owned rival ALTERRA MOUNTAIN, also based in Colorado, spent closer to European standards, with approximately 20 to 25 per cent of revenue going back into improving operations. Vail is the largest resort operator in North America, owning nearly 40 on the continent including Whistler-Blackcomb in British Columbia. Alterra is the second largest with nearly 20 properties, including Blue Mountain in Ontario and Mont Tremblant in Quebec.

💾 BIG TECH

• GOOGLE search may be coming to an end, at least as we’ve come to know it. At its annual developer conference this week, the company said it is overhauling its results in a way that will favour a personalized AI-powered box rather than its standard search bar, with “information agents” being dispatched to find answers to user queries. While the AI mode won’t be the default, users will be encouraged to ask follow-up questions rather than scrolling down to the traditional blue links. Pundits are pointing out the possible downsides to this change, with Business Insider saying that “a personalized internet isn’t the internet,” while Gizmodo says “Google is actively trashing its flagship Search product in pursuit of pumping as much AI slop into it as possible.”

🛞 TIRES

• The gloves are off in the Ontario tire business with an independent hauler filing a complaint with the Competition Tribunal against a recycling management company. ALL STAR TRANSPORTATION AND TIRE RECYCLING, based in the Hamilton area, is arguing that Oakville-based ETRACKS TIRE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS has cornered the market on recycling in the province, controlling 90 per cent of processors. All Star’s owner Scott Cavanaugh alleges that eTracks used that dominance to kill his business after he made comments to the press last year about its market power. When reached, Cavanaugh declined to comment further on the filing before the Tribunal accepts it. eTracks did not return a request for comment.

🚜 FARMING

• The Competition Bureau has arranged a grain elevator deal with PARRISH & HEIMBECKER in its proposed acquisition of GRAINSCONNECT CANADA. The Bureau was concerned that the acquisition by Winnipeg-based P&H of Calgary-based GrainsConnect would reduce competition for the purchase of wheat from farmers in the region around Reford, Sask. P&H has thus agreed to sell the grain elevator business it is acquiring to a buyer approved by the Bureau.

🛒 GROCERIES

• The Public Interest Advocacy Centre is calling on policy makers to kill real estate deals that allow large grocers such as LOBLAWS and SOBEYS to limit competition. These restrictive covenants, which we covered on the podcast recently, include a variety of anti-competitive limitations such as preventing other grocery stores from opening near an existing one, and new ones from springing up when others close down. The report from the consumer advocacy group also calls for the creation of a national registry of all such covenants so that the public can be informed of the some of the key factors limiting grocery competition in their neighbourhoods.

🚨 COMING UP

Speaking of groceries, did you get your $49.11 cheque yet? Class-action payouts for Breadgate – the price-fixing scheme in which Loblaw and others conspired to raise the price of bread – are now in progress. Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project executive director KELDON BESTER joins the podcast this Tuesday to discuss the long, arduous road to the payouts, and how it has done little to improve the grocery situation in Canada.

It’s a symptom of a much larger problem involving regulation, competition, housing affordability and Canada’s relationship with the United States.

The two countries have effectively isolated themselves from the global elevator market by maintaining their own unique technical standards. While most of the world follows European regulations, North America requires different testing, sizing and certification rules that make it harder for international competitors to enter the market.

The result is a highly concentrated industry dominated by four big multinational firms, where elevators cost far more to install, maintain and modernize than they do in Europe or Asia. As Canada becomes more urbanized and relies increasingly on condos and apartment buildings, these added construction costs are rippling through the housing market.

Worse still, two members of the Big Four – Finland’s Kone and Germany’s TK Elevator – are now set to merge in a $34 billion (U.S.) deal that will create the largest manufacturer in the world and tighten the oligopoly even further.

Stephen Smith is the executive director of the Center for Building North America, a research group that studies elevator markets around the world. He joins Do Not Pass Go to discuss how Canada needs to detach itself from U.S. standards and move closer to Europe in order to address the housing crisis and open its market to players outside of the oligopoly.

Smith’s Globe and Mail piece, referenced in this episode, is here, while his recent report on the global elevator market is here.

Much was made this week of the news that sugar-bomb purveyor Dunkin is coming back to Canada via an agreement with Quebec-based franchisor Foodtastic.

As plenty of the coverage noted, the popular American chain previously operated hundreds of stores in Canada but fizzled out in 2018 after franchisees accused it of failing to promote the brand enough to compete with the all-mighty Tim Hortons.

This time will be different, says Foodtastic boss Peter Mammas, because Dunkin has new ownership in the United States that is committed to growing the brand. The plan is to open hundreds of new locations across the country over the next few years, starting in Toronto and Montreal.

The additional competition to Tim Hortons, McDonald’s and other fast-food chains is welcome news for consumers and industry workers on its surface, but the behind-the-scenes ownership and consolidation is worth noting.

Dunkin, which was founded in a Boston suburb in 1950 and which dropped “Donuts” from its name in 2018, found its current owner in 2020 in the form of Inspire Brands, a fast-food conglomeration owned by Atlanta-based private equity firm Roark Capital Management.

Roark – named after a character in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead – is gobbling up fast-food chains like they’re chicken nuggets. The company has acquired 23 brands over the past 25 years, including Jimmy John’s, Hardee’s, Arby’s, Sonic, Subway and, most recently, Dave’s Hot Chicken.

For its part, Foodtastic is also rolling up brands. Aside from an existing deal with Roark for Canadian locations of Jimmy John’s, the company also runs Pita Pit, Freshii, Quesada, Second Cup and others.

As Restaurant Business notes, Roark’s performance with its brands has been spotty. While some, including Dunkin, have done well in recent years, others such as Hardee’s and juice chain Jamba have floundered. Subway, which the firm acquired in 2023, is in full-fledged decline despite its parent’s initial plan to open hundreds of new locations.

As others have noted, Dunkin’s return to Canada comes at a curious time. Not only is the chain’s motto – “America runs on Dunkin” – at odds with the prevalent patriotism of the day, but Canadian fast-food chains are also vocally complaining about labour shortages. A new chain with ambitions of hundreds of new stores is only going to exacerbate the issue.

Way back in 2012, when I wrote about the poutine wars for Report on Business magazine, I recall New York Fries founder Jay Gould saying that the Canadian fast-food industry was basically two players – McDonald’s and Tim Hortons – with everyone else fighting for scraps.

Sure enough, Gould got out by selling New York Fries to Cara Operations in 2015 and South Street Burger, his other chain, to MTY in 2019. Cara, which is now known as Recipe Unlimited, is a serial acquirer that owns Swiss Chalet, Harvey’s, St-Hubert and others, as is MTY, which counts Country Style, Mr. Sub, and Mr. Souvlaki among its many brands.

In both the U.S. and Canada, fast food is a business that looks competitive given the scores of brands out there, but beneath the hood it’s actually increasingly being run by fewer and fewer players.

ON THE PODCAST THIS WEEK:

🕺 ENTERTAINMENT

• Is it too early to call Ontario’s ban on reselling concert and sporting event tickets at a profit a total failure? Probably not, given what’s going on. Not only are tickets still being resold at vastly inflated prices on sites such as STUBHUB, but even the attempts to comply with the law are causing problems. As The Globe and Mail notes, some consumers who are legitimately trying to offload tickets they can’t use on TICKETMASTER are losing money after the site’s fees deductions. At the core of the problem is an issue we wrote about here back in October, which is: what’s the actual face value of a ticket? When resale sites have no way to verify these values, it makes banning sales-at-a-profit difficult. Nevertheless, Ontario says it’s beginning to crack down on the practice. Good luck with that?

• Speaking of Ticketmaster, problems for its parent LIVE NATION keep mounting with the entertainment giant now facing a whopping… checks notes… $900 fine in Toronto. The penalty is for a concert last year by metal band System of a Down at the new Rogers Stadium going past the 11 pm noise curfew, with the show instead wrapping up closer to midnight. Live Nation says the lateness was the result of a weather delay and is appealing the fine, which several commentators online have pointed out is equivalent to a couple of tickets to the show.

• Losses at CINEPLEX were lower in its most recent first quarter, down 36 per cent from a year ago to $22 million. A better movie slate so far this year, including Project Hail Mary and Hoppers, boosted attendance by 17 per cent and revenue 15.6 per cent to $291 million. In reporting the results, company chief executive Ellis Jacob declined to comment on recent news that Cineplex was sounding out U.S. counterparts REGAL and CINEMARK about possibly acquiring it.

• Don’t look now, but SPOTIFY is raising subscription prices for Canadian users. As MobileSyrup reports, prices are going up by between $1 and $3 per month, depending on the plan. The prices are live now for new customers while existing subscribers are getting hit with increases within the next few months. Spotify previously raised prices in 2024 and 2023.

🏦 BANKS

• Fintech challenger KOHO FINANCIAL has received access to INTERAC, giving the Toronto-based company the ability to offer e-transfer services to customers. The company says the development is going to make it considerably more competitive as it will now have closer relationships – and better data – on its customers than it did previously, when it was depending on big bank intermediaries to process e-transfers. Koho is one of the first non-banks to join the system, with WEALTHSIMPLE getting on board in 2023 and NEO FINANCIAL last month.

💾 BIG TECH

• Hamilton, Ont.-based startup RAVE is taking APPLE to the Competition Tribunal over the tech giant pulling its video-sharing app from the App Store. Rave says its app, which allows users to socially watch TV shows, movies and other media together while chatting in real time, was removed in 2025 because it competes with SharePlay, a FaceTime feature from Apple that enables similar capabilities. The startup wants its app reinstated and $25 million in damages, as well as triple the value of how much Apple made from these “anti-competitive practices.” Apple says the smaller company’s allegations are baseless and that its app was removed after “repeated guideline violations,” which included sharing and hosting pornographic and pirated content.

📱 TELECOM

• The plot surrounding BELL firing alleged coffee-badgers has thickened, with lawyers representing some of the affected workers suggesting the company may have mishandled the terminations. While Bell insists the employees were sacked because of clear and repeated evidence that they deliberately swiped their IDs to appear to be at work before leaving shortly thereafter, lawyers say they were given little time to respond to allegations. “That’s not an effort to get to the bottom of what happened,” employment lawyer Daniel Lublin told the Toronto Star. “That’s an effort to support a decision to terminate someone.” Bell stands by the integrity of its firing process.

• Despite wireless prices declining over the past few years, Canada needs more competition in the form of virtual mobile companies and foreign investors – so says a Globe and Mail editorial. The newspaper’s call comes as evidence shows that prices from the likes of BELL, ROGERS and TELUS are creeping up again, never mind the skyrocketing customer complaint numbers.

• Speaking of TELUS, the company is continuing to look for new businesses given the maturation and slowdown in telecom, and it looks like housing is one of them. The company is in the process of developing a couple of housing projects in British Columbia under its Telus Living brand. No word if new units will require activation or system access fees.

• The Competition Bureau is having a look at a deal where MOTOROLA is acquiring BELL’s land mobile radio networks services business for $675 million. The business, which involves push-to-talk wireless communications used primarily by first responders and transit fleets, is big enough to have triggered a mandatory review by the Bureau.

🏈 SPORTS & LEISURE

• In an item that’s half telecom, half sports, CANADIAN SOCCER MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT (CSME) scored a big goal this week against ROGERS. The organization, which owns the Canadian Premier League (CPL) and the rights to the OneSoccer streaming platform, may be heading to cable TV after a federal court dismissed an appeal by Rogers to keep CSME content off its airwaves. The organization had complained to the CRTC that Rogers, which owns Toronto FC, was guilty of “undue preference” by refusing to carry OneSoccer matches. The CRTC ruled against Rogers in 2023, prompting the company – which is Canada’s largest cable TV provider – to appeal. “Instead of being viewed by tens of thousands on an over-the-top platform, we’ll be viewed by millions of people around Canada who have linear TV,” said CSME CEO and CPL commissioner James Johnson.

🛢️ RESOURCES

• Despite a challenge by the Competition Bureau, Calgary-based natural gas company KEYERA this week announced it has completed its $5.1 billion acquisition of Houston-based PLAINS ALL AMERICAN PIPELINE. The company says the deal will greatly expand its liquids infrastructure business, which is what has the Bureau concerned – the enforcement agency believes Keyera will have a stranglehold over natural gas at a key hub in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta. The Bureau last week announced its first merger challenge since its failed effort to stop the Rogers-Shaw deal in 2023. For its part, Keyera says the industry believes its deal is a positive development for the sector.

🚨 COMING UP

Elevators cost a lot more to install in Canada and the United States than they do in Europe, which is why we have so few on a per-capita basis. The situation is partly the effect of a four-company oligopoly, and now that two of them – Kone and TK Elevators – are merging, it’s going to get worse. Stephen Smith, the executive director of The Center for Building North America, joins the Do Not Pass Go podcast this Tuesday to explain why taking the stairs is no longer an option.

These secretive real-estate deals, signed by Loblaws, Sobeys and others when they open stores, are keeping competitors away and funnelling consumers toward existing stores. They’re prevalent across Canada and, in some cases, their terms are egregious – would you believe that Loblaw’s typically blocks billiard halls from malls?

Once used to prevent specific minorities from living in certain areas, grocery chains have discovered and deployed these restrictive covenants to great effect, which why is the Competition Bureau is now investigating them and Manitoba has banned them.

Jacob Filipp, a marketing professional in Toronto, began unearthing and tracking these contracts after discovering how they drive up grocery prices. He maintains a definitive and growing database on his website as something of a hobby and a public service.

He joins Do Not Pass Go this week to explain restrictive covenants and how grocery chains are using them to drive up prices for Canadians.

The CRTC wasted no time in admonishing Bell this week after it was revealed that the company was trying to get around new regulations that prohibit service activation fees.

In a letter dated May 6, the regulator informed Bell that it does not consider the company’s recently introduced $40 “handling” fee on new smartphones to be exempt from rules that prohibit charges that act as barriers to customers switching services.

“A phone is a device that is required for the delivery of the wireless service customers are purchasing,” writes Scott Hutton, vice-president of consumer, analytics and strategy at the CRTC. “A fee associated with providing a phone may be considered to be an activation fee that is prohibited” under the Telecommunications Act.

The rules, which were announced in March and come into effect on June 12, are meant to make it easier for customers to switch between plans and providers. Carriers including Bell have been steadily increasing activation fees for new customers, with charges reaching as high as $80.

News of the handling fee was first reported by MobileSyrup. Bell says the company is reviewing the CRTC’s letter, with the fee still being in place as of Friday afternoon.

“We introduced this one-time device handling charge as a transactional fee to cover fulfillment costs and it applies only to the optional purchase of a device,” a spokesperson says. “This charge does not apply to bring your own phone customers.” 

In its letter, the CRTC is urging Bell to drop the fee on its own, or else.

“It is my hope that this situation can be resolved at this stage and will not require more formal regulatory action on the part of the Commission once the prohibition comes into effect,” Hutton wrote.

📱 TELECOM

• Also this week, BELL fired dozens of employees for coffee badging, or the post-Covid phenomenon of coming in to work and swiping one’s badge to prove attendance, only to then go home shortly after. The company says the employees were terminated for cause, with some engaging in egregious behaviour. One employee apparently swiped in just before midnight and then again shortly after so as to show their attendance two days in a row. Another entered the building to use the gym before going home. Some of the affected employees are considering legal action, according to the reports, saying they were encouraged to coffee badge by their managers as long as they hit their work targets and that their terminations are merely a way for Bell to cut jobs without paying severance.

• In something of a bombshell, it was revealed this week that TELUS has deployed artificial intelligence to alter the accents of its customer service agents. The technology works in real time and modifies pronunciation and the “acoustic features of speech, preserving the speaker’s voice while improving clarity and reducing accent-related friction,” according to a post on the company’s Telus Digital subsidiary website. To say that the revelation raised eyebrows would be an understatement, with Unifor recently telling Parliament that telcos were offshoring customer support and then altering how customers were perceiving who they were talking to. “The use of AI technology to deceive Canadians in any way should be prohibited,” a union rep said.

• Both the Competition Bureau and ROGERS made their closing arguments in court last week in the agency’s false advertising case against the company. The Bureau is arguing that the company is falsely marketing its Infinite wireless phone plans as having unlimited data when in fact the plans have data caps and speed reductions. For its part, Rogers is saying that the word “infinite” shouldn’t be confused with “unlimited.” The arguments aren’t publicly available yet and there’s no word on when the Competition Tribunal may rule on the case, though we’ve heard that such decisions may take two or three months.

ON THE PODCAST THIS WEEK:

🥊 COMPETITION

• Following a promise in the fall budget to take action on non-compete clauses in employment contracts, the federal government this week published draft legislation to that effect. The key addition is allowing the Governor in Council to make regulations against contract terms that “unreasonably restrict the ability of employees to engage in any business, work, occupation or trade, profession, project or other activity.” According to one law firm’s interpretation, this means the proposed legislation extends “beyond restricting non-compete clauses and broadly includes other employment-related restrictions.” It’s unclear what these might mean and are being left to the discretion of the Governor in Council.

🛢️ RESOURCES

• In its first merger challenge since its bruising defeat at the hands of Rogers-Shaw, the Competition Bureau is heading back to court in an attempt to stop Calgary-based KEYERA’s $5 billion acquisition of Houston-based PLAINS ALL AMERICAN. Lawyers for the Bureau this week said that the deal, if allowed to proceed, would significantly reduce competition for natural gas liquids at a key hub in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., and give the merged company greater ability to raise prices and impose worse contract terms on customers. “The bureau is taking this action to protect competition at a critical energy hub and to ensure that Canadian producers are not harmed by increased concentration and reduced choice,” said interim commissioner Jeanne Pratt in a statement. Keyera disagrees with the assertion and says the challenge doesn’t prevent the transaction from closing.

🏦 BANKS

• It’s tough out there for small and medium-sized Canadian businesses, especially when it comes to securing loans. A new report from SOCIAL CAPITAL PARTNERS titled “Built to Exclude” hones in on the problem – that Canada’s large deposit-funded banks, while admired internationally for their stability, are built to avoid risky lending. As a result, only 11.5 per cent of all outstanding business loans went to Canadian SMEs between 2019 and 2024, compared to an average of 44 per cent across peer nations. Check out the report, it’s a good read.

• The federal government has approved EQ BANK’s $800 million purchase of PC Financial from LOBLAW, which will boost the upstart company’s customer base to 3.3 million from around 800,000. EQ, which is Canada’s seventh-biggest bank, says there will be no immediate changes for PC customers once the deal closes this summer.

🕺 ENTERTAINMENT

• As lawyers in New York discussed how to proceed with the penalties phase of the LIVE NATION antitrust case this week, the company continues to maintain that it isn’t a monopoly. “I think it's pretty clear that the states who brought the case along with the federal government asked for a jury trial because it's a lot easier to win a jury trial than it is a [judge alone] trial in a case like this, particularly against a big corporation,” executive vice-president Dan Wall tells CBC. “And I'm not happy with the verdict, of course.” In the wide-ranging interview, Wall defends high concert ticket prices as products of demand and lower subsidies from record labels.

👕 CLOTHING

• Big Uniform is attracting regulatory attention, with both the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Canada’s Competition Bureau reviewing the proposed $5.5 billion (U.S.) takeover of UNIFIRST by CINTAS. Ohio-based Cintas is the largest player in the North American uniform rental market, with an estimated share of around 30 per cent, while Boston-based UniFirst has around 10 per cent. The Bureau launched its review on Apr. 24, around the same time as the FTC began speaking to the firms’ U.S. customers. One report suggests that some customers in the space are opposed to the merger because they view Cintas’ contracts as “authoritative” and “oppressive.”

🚧 CONSTRUCTION

• The Competition Bureau is also reviewing a merger by QXO and TOPBUILD, two U.S.-based building products distributors that supply contractors in Canada. In announcing the $17 billion (U.S.) deal last month, QXO said that the deal will make it the second largest publicly traded building products distributor, with leadership positions in insulation, roofing, waterproofing and lumber and building materials in key geographies. While the industry is fragmented, QXO has been on a roll-up binge of late, acquiring Beacon Building Products for $11 billion last year and lumber distributor Kodiak Building Partners earlier this year for $2.25 billion. The Bureau opened its review of the TopBuild deal on May 1.

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  🛒 GROCERIES & RETAIL

• Not everybody is a fan of MANITOBA’s ban on grocery stores using real estate exclusivity contracts to limit competition. The Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers says there shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all ban and that there are some situations where such deals make sense. Some smaller store owners are also saying the province should instead go after manufacturers and wholesalers if it really wants to bring down the cost of food.

🚨 COMING UP

And for more on this very topic, check out the Do Not Pass Go podcast this Tuesday. JACOB FILIPP works in marketing, but his side hobby is tracking the restrictive real-estate covenants that grocery stores are using to kill competition. He joins us to explain the problem and how eliminating covenants can lead to lower food prices.

With the Anti-Combines Act of 1889, we became the first country in the world to enact pro-competition laws, designed to bust monopolies and protect consumers. But, as the saying goes, being first doesn’t always mean being best.

The Competition Act, which took effect on June 19, 1986, was an attempt to fix the problems with its predecessor. It’s been revised several times since.

As the Act turns 40, we’re joined by its chief architect, Lawson Hunter, to assess how it has evolved and performed, and where Canada’s competition policy and enforcement should head next.

Hunter’s career is long and distinguished. A former competition commissioner and assistant deputy industry minister, he is the recipient of the Chambers Canada Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as a member of the bar and a member of the Order of Canada.

He’s the former chief corporate officer for Bell Canada and, as a long-time counsel at Stikeman Elliott, has advised many of Canada’s biggest companies on mergers and acquisitions.

On this week’s Do Not Pass Go podcast, we discuss the up-and-down enforcement of the Act, who should be the next Competition Commissioner, and how Canada has been “infected” by all these antitrust hipsters.

The federal government’s announcement of a sovereign wealth fund, more spending on trades workers and sports, and even a ban on cryptocurrency ATMs got most of the headlines from this week’s spring economic update, but some big competition news was also part of it.

The update from Prime Minister Mark Carney and his crew included a promise to introduce a whole-of-government competition plan that will “seek to ensure that existing and future policies across the federal government prioritize the promotion of competition and limit to the extent possible the potential negative impacts on competition that can, often inadvertently, stem from government policies.”

Details are scant so far, but the plan “will focus on removing inefficient government policies that impede competition arising from regulation, procurement and industrial support,” according to the update release, with more information promised in the coming months.

Carney’s 1995 Oxford thesis, “The Dynamic Advantage of Competition,” famously argued for strong antitrust enforcement and against preferential treatment for big national champions, but his government has for the most part avoided taking major steps to that effect so far.

Competition advocates welcomed the plan announcement as a possible indicator that this is about to change, though they attached the usual caution about the devil and the details.

“This is a positive sign and we’ll be watching to see whether the headline is backed up with real action to provide Canadians with more affordable choices in important markets,” said the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project in a statement on LinkedIn.

With few details to go by, it may be instructive to look to a similar plan enacted in the United States under President Joe Biden in 2021. His “Executive Order on Competition” instructed more than a dozen federal agencies to take 72 separate initiatives designed to counter anti-competitive practices.

A handful of these included strong enforcement of merger laws, limiting non-compete clauses for employees, reinstating net neutrality rules and even allowing for hearing aids to be sold over the counter.

Politico called the order, “the most ambitious effort in generations to reduce the stranglehold of monopolies and concentrated markets in major industries,” which is why it was unsurprisingly repealed by President Donald Trump last year.

Biden’s order was largely authored by Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor who grew up in Toronto. In discussing the order in a keynote address at the Competition Summit in Ottawa in 2023, Wu said the revival of competition policy must be supported by the highest levels of government and that the movement must be both intellectual and political. He also stressed that such a whole-of-government plan is a long process.

In his appearance on the Do Not Pass Go podcast back in October, Wu also talked about the risks associated with such an order and how he was somewhat relieved that Trump struck it down.

“The idea of that was to give the White House a role in providing direction to all the agencies, so maybe he’d say like, I don’t know, ‘just go investigate all the agencies owned by Democrats or by black people… or like let’s go hunt down immigrants or some crazy thing,” he said. “I would hate to have antitrust and competition become the excuse for yet another political purge or an attack on private industry.”

The whole-of-government approach has also been championed by Matthew Boswell, who served as Competition Commissioner for seven years before stepping down at the end of 2025. On the very first Do Not Pass Go podcast, Boswell expressed regret that he was not able to get such a plan instituted before his term ended.

Neither Wu nor Boswell responded to requests for comments on the Carney government’s announced plan, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if one or both end up involved in crafting the details over the months to come.

🥊 COMPETITION

• Another less-heralded tidbit from the spring economic update was some good news for EMPLOYEE-OWNED TRUSTS. The government has made permanent a tax incentive on this relatively new business structure, which allows owners to sell their companies to their employees. The $10 million capital gains tax exemption, which owners get when they go the EOT route, was set to expire at the end of this year. While there are currently more than 20 businesses in the process of converting, proponents were worried that this pipeline would be halted if the incentive were allowed to expire. As Social Capital Partners chair Jon Shell explained on the Do Not Pass Go podcast in March, EOTs are a useful tool for maintaining competitive markets by keeping businesses from being bought by larger companies or by consolidating private-equity firms. (And yes, we’re plugging a lot of previous Do Not Pass Go material this week… don’t worry, we’re not done yet):

💾 BIG TECH

• Manitoba Premier WAB KINEW continues to float new ideas that appear to be popular with regular voters, including a plan this week to ban social media use by kids. Following previously announced measures to ban surveillance pricing and restore consumers’ rights to repair to their electronics, Kinew this week told reporters that social media companies such as META could face billions in fines if they are found to not be taking proper action to enforce the province’s expected legislation. More on Manitoba in a second…

• While debate swirls about whether social media bans for kids actually work, Mark Zuckerberg may have inadvertently provided his enemies with a better, more effective solution. This week, the META boss threatened to pull his company’s apps – which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – from New Mexico if the state forces him to make those services less addictive. Zuckerberg says the changes the state is demanding are “technologically or practically infeasible” and that the company would need to build apps specifically for New Mexico to comply. “Therefore, granting this onerous relief could compel Meta to entirely withdraw Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp from the state as the only feasible means of compliance,” the company’s court filing says.

🛒 GROCERIES & RETAIL

• Getting back to Manitoba, the province is taking on SOBEYS over the grocery chain’s allegedly anti-competitive real estate contracts. Premier Wab Kinew, the guy from a few news items above, says the company has two deals in Winnipeg that are preventing other grocery stores from opening near them. While the Competition Bureau is probing these so-called restrictive covenants federally, Manitoba passed a law last June that prevents such exclusivity clauses. All of the big grocery chains dropped their property controls when the law came into effect, except for Sobeys, Kinew says.

• The past few days will surely go down in history as the week in which the mainstream media discovered and went crazy on SURVEILLANCE PRICING. The Financial Post looked at how Canadian grocery stores have switched to electronic shelf labels and whether that will allow them to set individual prices based on what they know about customers. CBC Front Burner had former BlackBerry co-chief executive Jim Balsillie on to talk about how Canada’s digital sovereignty or lack thereof figures into how much data retailers have on customers (yet another cheap plug: we beat the Ceeb to the punch by having Jim on to discuss the same stuff back in February). The Walrus had a piece titled “Just ban surveillance pricing already,” while The Guardian and other news outlets reported on how Maryland just became the first U.S. state to ban the practice. Surveillance pricing: it’s not just for ahead-of-the-curve competition-oriented news outlets anymore!

✈️ AIRLINES

• A work stoppage at WESTJET is getting closer to reality as flight attendants for the airline say they are becoming increasingly frustrated in their attempts to negotiate better pay terms. Echoing their colleagues at AIR CANADA, who went on strike last summer, WestJet employees are seeking compensation for the time they spend on the ground, which is unpaid work. The airline says it is “committed to a meaningful collective agreement that is also sustainable for WestJet’s future.”

📱 TELECOM

• Let’s get our last cheap plug out of the way, shall we? In case you missed it, this week we covered the tire fire that is ROGERS – in the span of just a few days, it was revealed that the company is cutting network investment, offering buyouts to half of its 22,000 and setting new records in customer complaints. Meanwhile, Rogers is pivoting hard into strengthening and expanding its sports monopoly and political influence, all of which brings back into focus the federal government’s blessing of the company’s mega-merger with Shaw in 2023:

🏈 SPORTS & LEISURE

• Ski and snowboard buffs may be interested to hear about possible consolidation among resorts in Quebec. LE MASSIF is looking to acquire MONT-SAINTE-ANNE, both of which are close to Quebec City and both of which had significant problems this past winter. Le Massif was shut down for three weeks because of a strike by workers demanding better wages and working conditions, while Mont-Sainte-Anne was nearly shuttered for the winter after failed safety inspections. Le Massif, which is owned by Cirque du Soleil co-founder Daniel Guathier, has tried unsuccessfully to acquire its competitor before.

🕺 ENTERTAINMENT

• Reselling event tickets for more than face value has now been illegal in Ontario for a week, but STUBHUB continues to do it. The company told CBC that it had “a productive conversation” with Stephen Crawford, the province’s minister of public and business service delivery, and that is updating its systems to comply with the law. But StubHub also said there are outstanding issues without further explaining what those were, and it did not indicate when it would comply. For its part, the province says it is working with the company to help it come onside the new law.

• Add streaming customers to the list of parties objecting to the PARAMOUNT takeover of WARNER BROS. A lawsuit filed by Paramount subscribers in California this week alleges that the deal will substantially reduce competition in streaming, news and theatrical distribution. The suit is seeking a court order blocking the merger and an unwinding of Skydance’s 2024 acquisition of Paramount. The case adds to growing opposition by industry workers, including actors and production staff, as well as by independent theatres here in Canada, which are urging the Competition Bureau to take a good, hard look at the deal.

🛗 ELEVATORS???

• It looks like we need a separate category for this item because we’re not sure where else to put it: Big Elevator is taking it to another level with Finland’s KONE buying German rival TK ELEVATOR for 29 billion euros ($46 billion Canadian). The deal will create the world’s largest elevator maker, with the combined entity moving past U.S.-based OTIS. As The Peak notes, Canada is pretty bad at elevators, with the second fewest per capita in the developed world thanks to rules regarding how many are needed are in each building, which leads to higher installation and maintenance prices. A new elevator costs up to four times as much in Canada as it does in Europe, which explains the North American oligopoly where four players – or three if the merger happens – control 70 per cent the market, going as high as 90 per cent in Ontario.

🚨 COMING UP

Whether you love it or hate, Canada’s Competition Act is about to turn 40 years old. We’re joined on the Do Not Pass Go podcast this Tuesday by former competition commissioner, Order of Canada recipient and the Act’s chief author LAWSON HUNTER for a report card on how it has fared over the past four decades and where it might go next.

If Rogers were a train, it would be crazy and it would be going off the rails.

The latest customer complaint numbers, released today by the telecom industry ombudsman, show that the public’s frustration with the company is boiling over – a mounting issue on top of additional news this week that it is eliminating a significant number of employees and slashing capital spending.

Total complaints accepted by the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) between Aug. 1 last year and Jan. 31 for Rogers-Shaw climbed to 6,583, a 95-per-cent jump over a year ago. That doesn’t include the company’s Fido sub-brand, where complaints increased a whopping 155 per cent to 2,080 over the same time frame.

Including Fido, Rogers accounted for 44 per cent of all complaints accepted, which were up a dramatic 61 per cent to 19,157 total. Telus placed second at 16 per cent and Bell third at 13 per cent. The mid-year numbers come on top of three previous annual CCTS reports that showed successive new record highs in overall customer complaints.

“The continued increase in complaint volumes is significant and reflects the importance of having a trusted, independent organization that Canadians can turn to when concerns remain unresolved,” said CCTS commissioner and chief executive Josée Bidal Thibault in a release.

Consumer advocates are pointing the finger at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which oversees the CCTS, for failing to follow through on a review of the various codes of conduct that telecom providers must abide by.

“Until clear regulatory action is taken to address the gap between what consumers expect to pay and what they are actually charged, we are unlikely to see a dip in these complaint numbers,” says Tahira Dawood, acting general counsel at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre.

“This long-awaited review is still not in effect, and consumers have no clarity as to when this review will happen.”

Job and Network Cuts

The CCTS figures come a week after Rogers announced it was slashing infrastructure investment by 30 per cent and two days after The Globe and Mail reported that it is offering voluntary departure packages to half of its 22,000 employees (an additional 3,000 working for the company’s majority owned Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment are not affected).

The company did not say whether it had a reduction target, though the newspaper noted that only a minority of employees who are offered a buyout typically accept it.

Rogers did not respond to a request for comment on the customer complaint numbers, but on the jobs report, a spokesperson told the Globe that, “We are taking steps to adjust our cost structure to reflect the business realities of the current environment.”

The developments put the spotlight back on the federal government, which approved Rogers’ controversial $26 billion acquisition of fellow cable giant Shaw in 2023 and which on Tuesday announced a whole-of-government competition initiative in its spring economic update.

Despite objections at the time from the Competition Bureau and the government’s own Industry Committee, then-Minister of Innovation Science and Economic Development François-Philippe Champagne allowed the Shaw deal to go ahead in exchange for “legally binding commitments” from Rogers and Quebec’s Videotron.

Those commitments included infrastructure spending, maintaining employee numbers and wireless pricing benchmarks. Champagne – who is now the Finance Minister – said the government would watch the companies “like a hawk” to ensure compliance:

An ISED spokesperson says the government is aware of Rogers’ offer of departure packages to employees, but did not comment on whether it will be taking any action related to its merger commitments.

“We expect Canadian telecommunications providers to act in a transparent and considerate manner throughout their interactions with their employees,” the spokesperson said. “The federal government’s role is to ensure a fair and competitive marketplace where consumers are protected, and we will not shirk from that duty.”

In the government’s spring economic update on Tuesday, Champagne introduced a plan that will:

“Ensure that existing and future policies across the federal government prioritise the promotion of competition and limit to the extent possible the potential negative impacts on competition that can, often inadvertently, stem from government policies. The plan will focus on removing inefficient government policies that impede competition arising from regulation, procurement, and industrial support. The Minister of Finance and National Revenue will provide further information on this initiative in the coming months.”

Competition advocates support the whole-of-government approach in theory but want to see further details. Keldon Bester, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, points to last week’s CRTC ruling that leaves wholesale internet rates high – and which benefits big telecom companies including Rogers – as an example of an anti-competitive decision by a government agency.

“We’ve seen progress on wireless pricing in the last two years following the agreements struck between Rogers and Quebecor, but is this progress going to be durable or go the way of the job commitments that came out of the [Shaw] merger?” he says.

“Paired with the decision out last week from the CRTC on fibre wholesale pricing, the outlook is not encouraging for consumers looking for relief on wireless or home internet bills.”

While Rogers cited a “punitive” regulatory environment as the reason for slashing network investment, the competing companies who depend most on wholesale access say the CRTC continues to treat Canada’s large companies favourably. Last week’s ruling effectively represents, “the end of independent internet competition for consumers in Canada,” according to the Competitive Network Operators of Canada.

Sports Monopoly and Political Ties

Rogers also last week confirmed that it is planning to expand into the unregulated sports market by acquiring the remaining 25 per cent of MLSE that it does not own from businessman Larry Tanenbaum.

The acquisition would strengthen the company’s existing monopoly over major sports in Toronto – where it owns the Maple Leafs, Raptors, Blue Jays, Toronto Football Club and others, plus the Rogers Centre and Scotiabank Arena. So far, Rogers’ position in Toronto sports has not attracted any government or regulatory attention.

Champagne, who announced the spring update on Tuesday, replaced Navdeep Bains in 2021 as the head of ISED. Bains, who cited a desire to spend more time with his family as the reason for leaving government, then joined CIBC as vice-chair of global investment banking before ultimately ending up as chief corporate affairs officer at Rogers in 2023.

Rogers recently announced that Bains is stepping down from his role as of May 8, after which he is widely expected to run for leadership of the Ontario Liberal party.

The currently leaderless provincial Liberals this week pulled even in committed voter intentions following Conservative Premier Doug Ford’s recent attempt to buy a private jet, with the parties polling at 36 per cent and 37 per cent respectively.

Concerns about Rogers’ ties to government have been raised before. As then-federal NDP Industry critic Brian Masse said at the time of Bains’ new job that, “This hiring raises questions, especially after the government green-lit the Rogers-Shaw merger, benefiting Rogers at the expense of Canadian consumers.”

In 2022, Pemberton started My Merch, a movement against the entertainment giant demanding a cut of artists’ merchandise sales in venues it owned. That effort led to more than a hundred venues signing on and a wave of public awareness around the issue.

Now, on his just released new album Forager, the former Edmonton poet laureate uses his love of vintage clothing and thrifting as a bridge to connect with his immediate surroundings and to return to a less ephemeral existence that isn’t so controlled by big corporations.

He goes further in his upcoming book, Ways of Listening, in which he explores how to really connect with music – without relying on algorithms.

He joins Do Not Pass Go this week to talk about the ongoing Live Nation monopoly cases in both the U.S. and Canada, the future of Spotify and streaming, and how the fakeness of artificial intelligence is going to make people treasure real music again.

Check out Forager here. His upcoming book, Ways of Listening, is out May 26 and can be found here. And of course, check out his regular musings on Substack.

We also mention The Artist Economy, a Substack by Joel Gouveia, which can be found here.

The weekly competition news roundup on a Friday afternoon? Wha?!? It’s happening, people! Or… it is this week, at least. I’m trying some things out and am wondering if more or less people might read this at the end of the week rather than on a weekend morning. Let’s find out, shall we? And with no more ado, let’s get to it:

In a classic let’s-distract-from-the-bad-news-with-some-good-news move, the CRTC issued two decisions on Friday that will affect internet and wireless customers.

First, the bad news: final rates on wholesale internet access that affect most Canadians are largely unchanged, a decision that smaller service providers say “will end meaningful consumer internet competition in Canada.”

Wholesale rates are an arcane subject that can cause eyes to glaze over, but they’re vital because they do much to determine what the vast majority of Canadians pay for internet service, both directly and indirectly.

In a nutshell, wholesale rates are what internet providers pay to large telcos to use parts of their networks so that they can deliver services to their own customers. This has generally applied to smaller, independent providers such as TekSavvy and National Capital FreeNet but it has also become relevant for big companies including Bell and Telus, who were recently given access to each others’ networks outside of their home territories by the CRTC.

The idea is that consumers should have multiple providers to choose from for their internet services, but the cost of building many networks to homes is prohibitive and impractical, since nobody wants their lawns dug up by a dozen companies installing cables. Wholesale-based competition – service providers sharing networks in exchange for access fees – is the solution.

Those access rates, which the CRTC arrives at after studying costs submitted by network owners and then adding a suitable markup, are the biggest operating expense for indie providers.

As such, they do much to determine the competitive landscape for internet service in Canada. If wholesale rates are low, indie providers can offer services for lower prices and force the big companies to follow suit. If the rates are high, prices for consumers stay high and the indies have trouble competing – especially since the big companies don’t have to pay themselves wholesale fees. As an extra gut punch to smaller competitors, the big companies often sell internet services to consumers at prices below what they charge at wholesale.

So what did the CRTC do about these rates on Friday? Here are the interim access rates on Bell and Telus networks for services up to 1.5 gigabits per second that the CRTC set in 2024, compared with the new ones introduced today:

• Bell (Ontario and Quebec): $68.94, now $68.26

• Telus (Quebec): $65.25, now $57.86

• Telus (Alberta and B.C.): $80.41, now $77.21

As is clear, only Telus’ access rate in Quebec has seen a significant change while its fees in the west are decreasing slightly. Bell’s rates are effectively the same.

In its press release, the CRTC trumpeted these incremental changes as taking “action to help deliver more choice of affordable internet services.” That statement might possibly be justified by the fact that the regulator did actually lower one other type of wholesale fee – so-called capacity charges.

On top of paying a per-customer access fee to the network owner, wholesale-based service providers must also pony up for how much internet bandwidth their customers might actually use at a given time. Known as Capacity-Based Billing (CBB), it’s bought in 100-megabit-per-second increments, and the CRTC did in fact lower prices here. Here are the comparisons for Bell and Telus again:

• Bell (Ontario and Quebec): $64.24, now $44.19

• Telus (Quebec, Alberta and B.C.): $75.86, now $42.12

Do these changes make a difference? Not at all, according to the indies. They say CBB makes up only a small fraction of a customer’s total bill, whereas the wholesale access fee is much more important.

“Dropping the main [fibre] line rates from $68.94 to $68.26 is a slap in the face: so much time and work spent for nothing – they can't think it will have any impact for the independents,” says Shelley Robinson, executive director of National Capital FreeNet. “Part of the reason the Commission keeps dropping CBB is because it does so little and yet they can say they dropped wholesale rates.”

It’s worth noting that these “final” rates can also be appealed in various ways by all involved parties. Given the history of wholesale rates in Canada, it’s a really safe bet that someone will.

It’s also worth noting that these rates only apply to fibre networks. As TekSavvy notes, only a fraction of Canadians are on fibre networks, while the majority are on cable owned by the likes of Rogers and Videotron.

“The CRTC has kept the same high wholesale rates it already set years ago. After waiting three years for this decision, it is frustrating that nothing has changed to help increase real competition or lower retail prices for fibre internet,” says Andy Kaplan-Myrth, vice-president of regulatory and carrier affairs at the company.

“We continue to wait for the CRTC's decision for the vast majority of wholesale rates, including cable internet rates. These rates have been unchanged for years and remain outstanding even as the cable carriers upgrade and replace those networks, evicting small independent competitors from wholesale access to thousands of consumers’ homes.”

The ongoing saga of wholesale rates on those “older” networks, the CRTC’s inability or unwillingness to finally set them, the resultant demise of many indie ISPs, and the role that now apparent Ontario Liberal leader candidate Navdeep Bains played in it, is a tale that we’ll relate here shortly.

But for now… what about the good news mentioned above? Oh yes: the CRTC also announced click-to-cancel rules for telcos, meaning that internet and cellphone providers will have to make it easy for customers to modify or cancel their services online without having to call in and inevitably spend hours on the phone with an agent.

Of course, the bad news to that good news is that these rules don’t take effect until a year from now, which is plenty of time for the telcos to appeal them or otherwise try to water them down.

QUICK UPDATE: Seconds after I hit send on this newsletter, the Competitive Network Operators of Canada – an advocacy group representing small ISPs – issued the mic drop of all mic drops with a full-page statement on its website proclaiming that, “CRTC final fibre rates end independent internet competition for consumers in Canada.”

🕺 ENTERTAINMENT

• Canada’s independent theatres are urging the Competition Bureau to take a good hard look at the proposed takeover of WARNER BROS. by PARAMOUNT because of its potential impact on film exhibition here. In an open letter to the enforcement agency, the Network of Independent Cinema Exhibitors (NICE) highlights that Warner Bros. holds “one of the most significant repertory catalogues in cinema history,” which many second-run theatres depend on, and that it is currently “the most exhibitor friendly major studio.” NICE, which represents more than 140 theatres across the country, points to Disney’s takeover of Fox in 2019 as a cautionary tale. Since the merger, Disney has imposed more onerous terms on independent theatres and significantly decreased the number of films they can access. “NICE urges the Competition Bureau to conduct a full and rigorous review of this transaction, with specific attention to its impact on Canadian filmmakers, theatrical distribution in Canada, and on independent exhibitors,” the group says.

• On that front, opposition to PARAMOUNT’s proposed acquisition is also growing in Hollywood, despite WARNER BROS. shareholders approving the transaction. A letter initially signed by more than 1,000 actors and production workers has now grown to more than 4,000 signatories, with the likes of Robert DeNiro and Sofia Coppola getting in on the action.

• And hey, it’s now illegal to resell concert and sporting event tickets in Ontario at a profit. TICKETMASTER has begun delisting tickets running afoul of Premier Doug Ford’s new law, while STUBHUB and SEATGEEK say they intend to comply. Will base ticket prices now just get more expensive to compensate?

✈️ AIRLINES

• In saying the quiet part out loud, U.S.-based airline JETBLUE looks to have provoked a new lawsuit around its alleged use of surveillance pricing. The class action, filed in New York, comes right after an employee of the airline told a customer complaining about prices on X, formerly Twitter, to “try clearing your cache and cookies or booking with an incognito window.” The lawsuit says customers shouldn’t have their privacy rights violated in a “digital rat race for airline tickets,” and that costs should be the same for each similarly seated passenger. Surveillance pricing, meanwhile, is hot, hot hot, with Manitoba moving to ban the practice, new NDP leader Avi Lewis calling for the same and Doug Ford saying… nah, actually we’re good with it.

• Here in Canada, WESTJET is closely following a price increase on checked baggage by AIR CANADA with a hike of its own. As CBC notes, it’s the third increase to baggage fees in the past three years, which really proves that flying is the new cellphone or Netflix subscription. Or is it vice versa?

🛒 GROCERIES

• And while we’re on the topic of surveillance pricing, SOBEYS has expanded its deal with a tech company that will allow the grocery chain to install electronic shelf labels at more than 300 stores. The $51 million deal with Montreal-based JRTech Solutions, which distributes the electronic labels made by Sweden’s Pricer AB, will see deployment begin in May. As Supermarkets News notes, Walmart’s plan to equip all its U.S. stores with digital shelf labels has met with heavy resistance from workers unions, who object to the move both taking away jobs and opening the door to prices being based on individual customer data.

💾 BIG TECH

• Antitrust trials are great for embarrassing emails from big companies coming out – see the recent Live Nation “robbing them blind” case – a fact that AMAZON is again learning the hard way. Emails revealed this week in an ongoing monopoly case in California against the company suggest that Amazon colluded to raise the prices of pet treats, khaki pants, eyedrops and other products. As one exchange showed, Amazon raised prices on a set of dog treats and worked with its manufacturer to convince Chewy, a competing online pet product retailer, to follow suit. “The evidence uncovered today is clear as day: Amazon is working to make your life more unaffordable,” said state attorney general Rob Bonta. Amazon, of course, disagrees.

• In case you missed, Alexander Martin – the Toronto indie game developer known as Droqen – joined the Do Not Pass Go podcast this week to give us a behind-the-scenes on his historic attempt to take on GOOGLE and APPLE at the Competition Tribunal:

🥊 COMPETITION

• The federal government is looking to appoint new lay members to the COMPETITION TRIBUNAL. Effectively Canada’s competition court, the tribunal is a panel currently made up of four judges and five lay members, though up to eight are allowed by law. As previously reported here, two existing members – Stephen Law, an economics professor at Mount Allison University, and Ted Horbulyk, an associate professor emeritus of economics at the University of Calgary – recently had their terms extended until 2030. Ramaz Samrout, a managing partner of Ottawa-based consulting firm REIM Strategies, is scheduled to see her term end on June 1. A spokesperson could not say how many new members the Tribunal is currently looking to add, but the part-time jobs require a post-graduate degree in economics, business, commerce or finance and offer a per-diem of $920 to $1,080.

🤝 LOBBYING

• Thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out the subscriber survey last week, it gave me some great insights on what you guys like and maybe don’t like so much. Our monthly Lobby Report got the least love in those responses, and that’s understandable – it had been a work in progress that I was feeling my way into. I’ve decided to yank it from the regular rotation from now but, because I’m conscious that it does have fans, I’ll likely reintroduce it as a special feature for paid subscribers, while also working on making it more useful as opposed to simply functional.

• In that vein, just a few notes on who lobbied who the most in March. Leading the charge was the UNIFOR trade union, which descended on Ottawa on Mar. 23 and 24 with a lobbying blitz that resulted in 82 total posted communications, most of which were with Members of Parliament but also Industry Minister Melanie Joly. ENBRIDGE was up next with 55 total communications for the month, with many involving the Finance and Natural Resources departments. The COUNCIL OF CANADIAN INNOVATORS, a tech advocacy group led by former BlackBerry boss Jim Ballsillie, rounded out the top three with 53 communications, with 13 of those involving Joly’s department.

🚨 COMING UP

Most musicians are afraid to speak out about the Live Nation monopoly for fear of repercussions, but not Rollie Pemberton. Better known as CADENCE WEAPON, the rapper and former Edmonton poet laureate takes aim at a more real reality that is less controlled by big corporations on his new album, Forager, and upcoming book, Ways of Listening. He joins us next week on the Do Not Pass Go podcast, which is now going to drop on Tuesdays rather than Mondays as per what you guys told us you preferred in the subscriber survey.