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.

  ---

  🛒 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.

Last year, the Toronto-based independent game developer – known online as “Droqen” – jumped on a new law that lets regular citizens and civil society groups challenge monopolies.

His target was Google’s deal with Apple, where its search engine is the default on the iPhone maker’s devices in exchange for billions of dollars. This arrangement, Martin argued, is harmful to Canadian businesses and internet users because it forces them to use an opaque system that Google can – and does – change at any time.

The Competition Tribunal in January refused to let his complaint go ahead, citing doubt that Martin and his law firm, Berger Montague, could mount a compelling case.

But the effort was historic because it established the rules that other Canadian monopoly cases against Live Nation and Apple are now following.

Martin joins the Do Not Pass Go podcast this week to talk about the experience, how the new law is intended to allow regular people like him to fight monopolies, and how the judge in his case may not have got that memo. Link is in the first reply below.

I really want to hear from you as we head into Do Not Pass Go phase 2, “Operation: Let’s Grow This Thing,” so I’m prioritizing the short, short, like really short survey below over dealing with some of the massive news from the past few days. Fear not, we’ll deal with the Live Nation verdict and Cineplex being up for sale soon enough.

In the meantime, please take a few seconds to answer five quick questions. Your answers will help me determine where to go next:

Start Survey

And since we’re here, have a listen to the new one-minute podcast trailer, inserted above, which I’ve created for Spotify visibility purposes. Speaking of the podcast, we’re back this Monday with an exclusive interview with Alexander Martin – aka Droqen – the independent video game developer who sued Google for being a monopoly.

As Billy Red Lyons used to say, don’t you dare miss it!

Current Rogers executive and former Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains is considering a bid to become leader of the Ontario Liberal party, according to sources close to the situation.

His decision will likely depend on who the provincial Liberals choose to represent them in an upcoming by-election in the Scarborough Southwest riding, a decision that will happen on May 9.

The front-runner in that contest is Nate Erskine-Smith, the current federal Liberal Member of Parliament for Beaches–East York, who declared his desire to lead the provincial party in February. Erskine-Smith finished second to Bonnie Crombie in the leadership race in 2023.

Tyler Banham, a member of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s campaign team in Ontario, has been pegged as Bains’ campaign manager, according to one source.

“Nothing is ever 100 per cent, but it’s reasonably certain [that Bains will enter the race],” according to a source. “All eyes are on Scarborough Southwest because if Nate wins, [Bains’] entrance is less likely.”

However, Bains – who is currently chief corporate affairs officer at telecom giant Rogers – has “a lot of people behind him who don’t like Nate, they might push him regardless,” the source adds.

Neither Bains nor Banham immediately returned requests for comment.

Coming from an accounting background, Bains was first elected in 2004 as the Liberal MP for Mississauga–Brampton South. In 2015, he was named Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development by Trudeau, a post he held until 2021, when he left politics with the stated intent of spending more time with family.

After nearly two years as an executive at CIBC, Bains joined Rogers in 2023, a move that proved controversial.

As Innovation Minister, Bains in 2020 released a statement in which he shared big telcos’ fears that a CRTC ruling a year earlier would discourage them from further investing in networks. The ruling would have significantly lowered the wholesale rates that independent providers paid to the big telcos to use parts of their networks to deliver services.

While Bains did not formally intervene in the CRTC’s ongoing review of the rates, his statement was enough to convince the regulator to largely reverse its own ruling and keep wholesale fees high – a decision that led to many of Canada’s independent providers throwing in the towel and selling themselves to the big telcos, including Rogers.

His appointment to the company in 2023 amid the mega-merger with fellow cable giant Shaw, which was approved by his ISED successor François-Philippe Champagne, was criticized as “incredibly concerning.”

“This hiring raises questions, especially after the government green-lit the Rogers-Shaw merger, benefiting Rogers at the expense of Canadian consumers,” said NDP industry critic Brian Masse in a statement at the time. “Canadians have questions — they want to ensure Rogers now has no easy access to cabinet with this hiring.”

Another source close to the situation confirmed Bains’ potential bid, and that his ties to corporate company could prove to be an asset in terms of fundraising and Bay Street support.

“The Liberals need to break through in the Peel region, which hasn’t happened in the last three elections,” the source said. “The Conservatives didn’t have to spend there because they thought they had it on lock, and they were right.”

Rogers has also had close ties with the government of Toronto, most notably through former mayor John Tory. The Toronto Star in 2021 revealed that Tory was receiving an annual retainer of $100,000 for sitting on the Rogers Control Trust while he was mayor, while one of the family members herself – Martha Rogers – disputed his statements that he only worked with the company in his spare time.

Tory resigned as mayor in 2023 following the disclosure of an affair with a staffer. Rumours had circulated recently that he was considering running for the position again, though he said last month that he does not plan to.

A small, now defunct company in British Columbia is taking a French industrial gases giant to court for allegedly freezing it out of the dry ice business.

Fraser Valley Dry Ice, started in 2020 in Abbotsford, B.C., is asking Canada’s Competition Tribunal for leave to proceed with an abuse-of-dominance case against Paris-based Air Liquide, who it says engaged in a sustained pattern of conduct that progressively impaired its “ability to compete and ultimately resulted in its exclusion from the market.”

Fraser Valley says Air Liquide began implementing frequent and unreasonable price increases and supply constraints as of 2022, right after it informed the multinational of its plans to expand. Air Liquide maintains dominance in supply of liquid carbon dioxide – the main component for the dry ice that is used in refrigeration – and in downstream dry-ice sales through its own subsidiaries, according to the company.

“The supply of liquid carbon dioxide and industrial gases in Canada is highly concentrated, with a limited number of large suppliers operating at the upstream level,” the filing says. “Downstream distributors such as Fraser Valley Dry Ice are dependent on upstream suppliers like Air Liquide for access to essential inputs, with limited or no viable alternative sources of supply.”

Air Liquide continued to supply liquid carbon dioxide to fellow multinational firm Linde, which also operates downstream dry-ice sales, despite repeatedly claiming force majeure events that supposedly disrupted gas inventories.

The price increases and erratic supply got so bad that Fraser Valley Dry Ice was forced to wind down operations in January of this year, according to the filing. A prospective buyer expressed interest in acquiring the business and continuing operations, but the transaction did not proceed because the purchaser was not able to secure a reliable supply of liquid carbon dioxide from the French company.

“Air Liquide used its control over an essential upstream input – liquid carbon dioxide – while competing in the downstream market for dry ice, to impose pricing and supply conditions that increased the applicant’s costs and constrained its access to supply,” the filing says.

“These measures had the effect of materially compressing the margins available to Fraser Valley Dry Ice and impairing its ability to compete effectively in the downstream market… and had the effect of disciplining, limiting, and ultimately eliminating that competitor from the market.”

Air Liquide did not respond to a request for comment.

The Competition Bureau in 2018 found Canada’s industrial gases market to be highly concentrated, with three major companies dominating: Air Liquide, Ireland-based Linde and U.S.-based Praxis.

Linde entered into a consent agreement with the Bureau that year to sell its Canadian operations to Germany-based Messer following its merger with Praxis.

🛢️ RESOURCES

• The Competition Bureau is pressing its investigation into Calgary-based oil and gas firm KEYERA’s proposed acquisition of Houston-based gas company PLAINS ALL AMERICAN PIPELINE after acquiring a court order this week to gather information related to the deal. The Federal Court order requires Calgary-based INTER PIPELINE, another industry player, to produce records that the Bureau believes to be relevant to its probe into whether the acquisition will lead to a substantial lessening or prevention of competition in the Canadian oil and gas industry.

🥊 COMPETITION

• The COMPETITION BUREAU has also unveiled its planned priorities for 2026-2027 with a release titled “Advancing Competition to Improve Affordability and Choice.” The plan includes focusing on sectors that affect affordability the most, including food and housing, as well as continuing to crack down on deceptive marketing and hidden costs. The Bureau is also promising to focus on what it considers to be critical sectors: digital services, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, financial services, health and infrastructure.

• New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani is putting anyone who offers a subscription online on notice by resurrecting CLICK TO CANCEL rules. The rules – which essentially require anyone offering simple sign-ups for products and services online to make them just as easy to cancel – were originally introduced nationally in the United States by the Federal Trade Commission in 2024. But, an appeals court struck them down last summer just days before they were scheduled to take effect. Now, New York’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection is moving to strengthen the U.S. city’s consumer protection laws as part of a crackdown on “subscription tricks and traps.” Amazingly, click-to-cancel rules don’t appear to be anyone’s radar in Canada, despite such “tricks and traps” being just as widespread.

🏈 SPORTS & LEISURE

• The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an antitrust investigation into the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE over how the league is handling its television and streaming rights. While some of the lawsuit may be driven by how sports leagues including the NFL are increasingly parcelling out televised games to a host of providers, ESPN reports that the Murdoch family, which owns the FOX CORPORATION, might be behind it. Fox’s television rights with the NFL run out after the 2029 season, and the network may be looking to put pressure on the league to renegotiate by involving the government.

• U.S. private equity firm GTCR has acquired Montreal-based LIVEBARN, which provides amateur and youth sports live streams, in a $400 million-plus (U.S.), The Globe and Mail reports. Livebarn has cameras at more than 4,000 playing surfaces in almost every U.S. state and Canadian province and territory. The deal, which was approved by Industry Minister Mélanie Joly and Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller, is the latest in a wave of mergers and acquisitions in youth sports and sports technology, the Globe notes.

🕺 ENTERTAINMENT

• The entertainment industry mega-takeovers continue, with investment company PERSHING SQUARE this week tabling an offer estimated to be worth $64 billion (U.S.) for UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP. Pershing, which already owns a stake in the Netherlands-based record label as well as holdings in Google, Meta, Amazon and Burger King parent Restaurant Brands International, is looking to get in on the trend of growing music revenue, which is being driven by streaming services. Universal’s stable of artists include some of the biggest names in the world, including Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter and Kendrick Lamar. The label itself has some Canadian connections, with it being briefly owned by the Bronfman family through their company Seagram’s in the late 1990s.

✈️ AIRLINES

• AIR CANADA is testing a new passenger complaints resolution system that employs a third-party mediator rather than the federal Canadian Transportation Agency. The airline is asking 500 randomly selected passengers who have complaints in with the CTA to try out the test, which is being run by a subsidiary of U.K.-based CDRL Group. The program would aim to resolve disputes within 90 days and alleviate the current CTA backlog of 95,000 complaints, many of which are stretching out to two or three years. Critics, however, warn that a system that involves a supposedly neutral mediator hired by an airline should be closely watched. As one such critic tells CBC: “We don’t want the fox in charge of the chicken coop here.”

🚨 COMING UP

Just a reminder that we’re catching a short breather next week, and the Do Not Pass Go podcast will be back with a thrilling new episode on Apr. 20. Now is a good time to hit that “subscribe” button… but you’ve already done that, right?

Our quick growth tells us there’s a big appetite for what we’re doing here, which is reporting on and elevating the profile of competition, affordability and consumer issues in Canada.

That’s great news, because we’re just getting started – there’s so much more to come.

Join us on this very special episode of the podcast for a look back at some of the highlights and stats from the past six months, plus a look forward at what’s next.

Plus, in between, we’re joined by Vass Bednar, director of the Canadian SHIELD Institute sovereignty think tank, and Arshy Mann, host of The Hatchet podcast and Substack, for a report card on how the “hawkish” Carney government is doing so far on competition issues.

Along with Denise Hearn, Vass is the co-author of the 2024 book The Big Fix, while Arshy in 2022/2023 produced Canadaland’s monopoly podcast series, both of which were the inspiration for Do Not Pass Go.

What better way to celebrate our milestones than a conversation with grandma and grandpa!

Check out the Canadian SHIELD Institute here and The Hatchet here.

Google has suffered more defeats on the way to its online monopoly trial in Canada, which begins in January, 2027.

The Competition Tribunal this week threw out nine motions made by the company in the case brought by the Competition Bureau, which is arguing that Google is harming the online marketplace by abusing its dominant positions in search and advertising. Google was trying to avoid having some of its top executives provide the same testimony used in a similar 2024 U.S. antitrust trial, and to disqualify some of the Bureau’s existing evidence.

In both instances, Justice Andrew Little mostly dismissed Google’s arguments, handing the Bureau several small wins and $10,000 in legal costs.

Lawyers for the Bureau had requested that 12 Google employees, some of whom are top executives, review around 600 pages of transcripts from the U.S. District Court proceeding, in which the company was ultimately found to be a search and online advertising monopoly.

Google countered by saying that such a request was “voluminous and overly burdensome.” The Bureau said the company’s response and motion was disingenuous and “nothing more than a baseless tactical move.”

Little agreed, for the most part, and ordered Google to confirm whether the testimony given in the U.S. case by three executives – Nirmal Jayaram and Nitish Korula, both senior engineering directors, and YouTube chief executive Neal Mohan – remains true and accurate now, or whether and how it has changed.

Little also dismissed a number of Google’s motions related to the Bureau’s previous three-year investigation, which concluded in 2016 without finding sufficient evidence that the company had engaged in anti-competitive conduct in online search and advertising.

Google was looking to question Bureau staff how that previous investigation had affected the decision to launch a new case against the company. But Little ruled that “Google’s questions are not proper… and need not be answered.”

This week’s defeats follow a more significant loss by Google last month, in which Little also dismissed an attempt by the company to qualify the case against it as criminal rather than civil, which would have granted it protections under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

🥊 COMPETITION

• Speaking of the COMPETITION TRIBUNAL, the federal government has quietly reappointed two of the lay members who make up the court’s panel. Stephen Law, an economics professor at Mount Allison University, and Ted Horbulyk, an associate professor emeritus of economics at the University of Calgary, were set to have their terms expire on Apr. 15, but both have been extended until Apr. 14, 2030. Two other lay members – Wiktor Askanas, a business professor at the University of New Brunswick, and Binah Nathan, a corporate director – are also due for term expiration this month, though neither appear to have been extended as of this writing. The department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development is responsible for Tribunal hiring. Due to the Easter holiday, we weren’t able to find out if any other candidates were considered or what’s happening with the other terms.

• And speaking of hiring, Jeanne Pratt has been upgraded from “acting” to “interim” COMPETITION COMMISSIONER. Pratt took over from long-time commissioner Matthew Boswell, who left the job early in November before his term was set to expire in February. Boswell has since landed as a partner at legal firm Norton Rose Fulbright. ISED is currently taking applications for the full-time commissioner role, until Apr. 8. Pundits suggest that the government’s real position on competition – whether it truly will be as “hawkish” as promised – will largely be revealed by who it chooses for the job.

💾 BIG TECH

• The Competition Bureau may have scored some small wins against Google this week, but it also took it on the chin in its separate fake review case against AMAZON. The Federal Court of Appeal has upheld a decision that prevents the Bureau from accessing company data related to health, personal care, home and electronic products sold by the e-tailing giant. The company argued that providing such info would be excessively burdensome, as the request covered a broad array of items. The judge agreed that the Bureau had failed to justify the wide scope of its request. The Bureau says it is assessing its next steps and that its case is ongoing.

• In case you missed it, Spencer Callaghan from the CANADIAN INTERNET REGISTRATION AUTHORITY is the guest on the Do Not Pass Go podcast this week. He warns of the dangers of entrepreneurs and businesses relying too heavily on online platforms and their ever-changing whims, and shares advice for what they should do instead. Spoiler: build your own online presence. It’s required listening for anyone doing business online:

✈️ AIRLINES

• Canada’s airlines had a hellish week, starting with AIR CANADA announcing the retirement of its embattled chief executive, Michael Rousseau. The news came on Monday, a week after Rousseau posted a video in which he expressed condolences to the families of the two pilots who died in the recent crash at LaGuardia Airport in New York. The video, which was in English only, sparked a fresh firestorm over Rousseau’s continued inability to speak French, a cardinal sin for the head of the Montreal-based airline.

• But wait, there’s more! AIR CANADA also got dinged with a $426,000 fine for multiple violations of Air Passenger Protection Rights (APPR) regulations related to cancellations from its flight-attendant strike last summer. The Canadian Transportation Agency this week said the airline had improperly handled re-booking and reimbursing passengers who were affected by the labour dispute in August. Industry critics say the fine is insignificant, but Air Canada plans to appeal it anyway.

• We’re not done with AIR CANADA yet. In case you missed it, we had the scoop here at Do Not Pass Go on how the airline used “scare tactics” last summer to get the feds to proactively intervene in that flight-attendant strike. As revealed in documents obtained through a freedom of information request, Air Canada told Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu that the disruption would be worse than those that followed the 9/11 and Covid-19 shutdowns. Hajdu did in fact intervene by ordering attendants back to work just hours after the strike was called. It’s a bit inside baseball, but it’s worth adding here that the minister’s department took two days to respond to three questions we put forward – why she invoked the code so fast, which of Air Canada’s arguments persuaded her to do so, and how much weight she gave to the 9/11 and Covid-19 warnings. The response we eventually got largely ignored the first question and completely ignored the other two. A spokesperson said “our response stands” after we reiterated the questions.

• CTV News also this week reported that the federal government, under at least two successive transport ministers, had intervened to limit the compensation that airlines have to pay passengers. Following updates to the APPR in 2023, then-transport minister Anita Anand told the Canadian Transport Agency that she was “disappointed” that the regulator was trying to add mechanical issues and labour disruptions to the list of grounds for which passengers could claim compensation. Her position is linked to heavy lobbying by the airlines, including AIR CANADA and WESTJET, and follows revelations in January by CBC that the feds also worked to undermine efforts to have the companies pay for the passenger complaints system.

• And then there’s this whopper: WESTJET has been nailed for lying about supposed maintenance issues with planes and denying passenger compensation for resultant cancelled flights. As one passenger who took the airline to small claims court tells CBC, WestJet cancelled his Edmonton-to-Fort-McMurray trip on the grounds that there were mechanical problems with the plane, only for that passenger to then discover that same aircraft flying later the same day through a publicly available flight tracker. It turns out that the airline had reassigned the plane in question to a more profitable route that did indeed have a mechanical issue, turning the situation into a “business decision.” As CBC notes, this sort of gamesmanship may be widespread.

📱 TELECOM

• Several of Canada’s larger cable companies are putting the screws to smaller wholesale-based competitors again by decommissioning copper networks, thereby stranding those providers’ internet customers or forcing them into much costlier services. Montreal-based COGECO has ignored a request by CRTC staff to maintain copper-based wholesale connections for Ontario-based TEKSAVVY, and will cut the service off on Apr. 14. A similar situation is happening in the Maritimes, where EASTLINK is decommissioning copper wholesale services used by FIBERNETICS. Both of the larger cable companies say that affected customers can be migrated to available wholesale fibre services in their respective areas, but the smaller companies are quick to point out that the access costs on those newer networks are still astronomically high – which inevitably means higher prices for customers. “TekSavvy is very concerned not only about how Cogeco’s decommissioning activities affect our customers, our business, and competition as a whole,” says Andy Kaplan-Myrth, the company’s vice-president of regulatory and carrier affairs, “but also about the CRTC’s ability to regulate incumbents that increasingly behave like they are too big or powerful to regulate.”

• Fans of competition-policy-as-entertainment have reason to be excited, with the acclaimed Rogers v Rogers one-man play returning to Crow’s Theatre in Toronto this fall. The show, which sold out during its initial run last year and which just completed a stint at Winnipeg’s Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, returns to Crow’s on Nov. 8 and goes till Dec. 13. It is, of course, based on the book of the same name by Globe and Mail reporter Alexandra Posadzki and focuses on the ROGERS family succession saga that unfolded a few years ago at the same time as the company was trying to complete a mega-merger with SHAW. If you missed it, check out our podcast interview with playwright Michael Healey and our review. Spoiler: it’s amazing, go see it.

🕺 ENTERTAINMENT

• While we’re on the topic of entertainment-as-competition-policy, there’s a fascinating narrative – some would say possible conspiracy theory – germinating about how corporate consolidation in radio and television has purposely worked to breed a more compliant culture. It started with SMASHING PUMPKINS front-man Billy Corgan recently suggesting on his podcast that rock music was purposely pushed out of the cultural spotlight in the late 1990s by MTV and the rest of the music industry in favour of rap and then pop, despite still being immensely popular, as a way of promoting artists who were more easily controlled by corporate labels and radio station owners. Charlie Benante, drummer for heavy metal band ANTHRAX, seconded that motion this week in an interview where he noted that consolidation in the radio industry – particularly by CLEAR CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, now known as IHEARTRADIO – also served to push out heavier music in favour of corporate-controlled pop. “There was a coup,” he said. It gets even juicier – or wackier, take your pick – with Corgan’s suggestion that the CIA may have been involved. In the context of the ongoing antitrust case(s) going on against LIVE NATION, it’ll be fascinating to see if this narrative gathers any steam or if it just turns out to be sour grapes from a handful of aging rock stars.

🚨 COMING UP

Do Not Pass Go is six months old and we just hit 1,000 subscribers! This Monday on the podcast, we take a quick peek back at a few of the highlights and look forward at what’s to come. In between, we host Canadian SHIELD Institute director VASS BEDNAR and The Hatchet’s ARSHY MANN to dissect the Carney government’s “hawkish” performance on competition issues so far.

Air Canada urged the federal government to prevent a strike by flight attendants last summer by telling officials that the impact of service disruptions could be worse than that following the 9/11 attacks or the Covid-19 outbreak, according to documents obtained by Do Not Pass Go through a freedom of information request.

In an eight-page letter to Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu dated Aug. 12, four days ahead of the strike that eventually went ahead on Aug. 16, executives warned that the expected shutdown of operations would have “significant economic consequences” for the airline and the country alike.

Air Canada was about to pull the trigger on grounding 249 aircraft across its network, which would affect 130,000 daily passengers covering 50 domestic and 115 international destinations, as well as cargo supply chains and “Canada’s reputation.” The airline also warned that full operational recovery could take seven to 10 days following the end of a strike action.

“The logistics involved and time necessary to affect the above may at first be difficult to appreciate,” wrote Marc Barbeau, chief legal officer and corporate secretary, and Arielle Meloul-Wechsler, chief human resources officer.

“Even the unplanned shutdown of airspace after 9/11 [in 2001] is not comparable. In that extreme case, passengers and crew largely remained in the same location for the duration of the grounding. Similarly, the significant scale down and ramp-up related to the pandemic [in 2020] is not comparable, notably as the return to pre-pandemic operations occurred over many months.”

The airline urged Hajdu to take the unusual step of invoking Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, which allows the minister to intervene in employment disputes to “maintain or secure industrial peace and to promote conditions favourable to the settlement of the industrial disputes or differences,” before an actual strike began.

“Delaying intervention until a work stoppage occurs seems to be more about encouraging the parties to present their best positions, rather than permitting them to use their strike or lockout rights, which, as experience shows, then only lasts for a limited period,” the letter says.

“If the intended purpose is to push parties to the brink, then that moment in our case is when our orderly shutdown must be activated… rather than 72 hours later when a work stoppage has formally begun. Once the costs of a shutdown begin to be absorbed there is less impetus to advance what might have been advanced earlier. In other words, the most generous employer offer is likely to be the one that avoids the costs of a shutdown. There is at present no useful purpose in refraining from acting now.” (Bolding from original letter, read it here:)

Air Canada Letter to Minister Patty Hajdu

2.49MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Air Canada requests federal government intervention in a potential strike by flight attendants in August, 2025.

Download

Hajdu did not invoke Section 107 prior to the strike, but did so just hours after it began. The Canada Industrial Relations Board ordered the airline’s 10,400 flight attendants back to work shortly after.

The attendants, who were seeking a number of concessions from Air Canada including pay for the time they spent on the ground, reacted angrily – they refused to comply and called the order a “betrayal” by the Liberal government. The strike ultimately ended three days later, on Aug. 19, after the airline caved on key points, including some limited pay for groundwork.

Air Canada spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick says a negotiated settlement with the union was always the airline’s preferred outcome, but it was forced to explore back-up plans – including requesting the use of Section 107 – to ensure continuity of operations.

“Failing a negotiated settlement, we viewed the government’s immediate intervention as necessary because of the nature of the airline business,” he says. “Unlike other businesses that can be shut down and reopened simply by opening the door, the airline business is very complex and shutting down and restarting is not easy.”

He added that the expected shutdown would have left aircraft parked all over the world, which would have put them out of position when the time came for a restart.

“This is the context in which we discuss other major events, such as 9/11, that brought the industry to a complete halt… even those events are not comparable for us because the restart was more complex than what we experienced for reasons explained in the letter. The intent was also to convey the extent of the knock-on effects of a work stoppage, particularly during the summer peak when millions of Canadians were relying on us for their holiday plans.”

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents Air Canada’s flight attendants, says comparisons of a potential strike-related shutdown to those caused by security- and health-related disasters are disingenuous.

“It was a total scare tactic because they were in full control,” says Wesley Lesosky, president of CUPE’s Air Canada component. “9/11, respectfully, they weren’t in full control of, the same with Covid. This was a strike, and to avert a strike you have to either put in more money or be prepared to lose money. I don’t necessarily buy their argument, only because they were in control of their destiny.”

Gabor Lukacs, head of the Air Passenger Rights advocacy group, says the letter is also more troubling evidence of Ottawa’s cozy relationship with the nation’s airlines.

“Air Canada is telling a minister what to do and the minister is obediently complying, like a lackey,” he says. “Having to shut down the network is another myth – the airline can and should operate their flights while the employees are still available. Had Canada had EU-style passenger protection, Air Canada would not have dared to play this kind of game with its employees and the public.”

Separately, the Canadian Transportation Agency this week fined Air Canada $426,000 for 71 violations of the Air Passenger Protection Regulations during the strike, for failing to refund tickets or provide customers with alternative flights on other carriers. The Montreal-based airline, which in February reported full-year revenue for 2025 of $22.4 billion and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $3.1 billion, says it plans to appeal the fine.

Employment and Social Development Canada did not provide a response to queries by the requested deadline of Tuesday afternoon in regards to why Hajdu invoked Section 107 so quickly, or which – if any – of the statements made by Air Canada in its letter affected her decision.

Following the strike, the minister ordered a probe into allegations that flight attendants were being expected to do unpaid work. The government in February published findings from the first phase of its investigation, which was that more data is needed.

Hajdu reported that, while the government heard stories from union members about not being fully compensated for delayed flights, their anecdotes couldn’t be verified by pay records. “That’s not to say it isn’t true,” she told the Canadian Press. “That’s just to say that the records aren’t matching.”

Lesosky says CUPE is not happy with the current, second phase of the investigation because it is centring around the airlines self-auditing their own pay records.

“I have zero satisfaction with it because we’re not part of it.”

Stories of businesses losing access to their social media accounts are increasingly popping up. Entire industries have pivoted because of changes to algorithms, only for platform owners to switch them up again on a whim. Some have ceased to exist entirely while others have changed hands and ushered in completely new sets of rules.

On top of it all, most of the platforms in question are U.S.-based – a big problem when Canada is pushing toward more sovereignty.

In other words, it’s never been a worse time to hitch your online wagon to someone else’s train.

Spencer Callaghan is the brand and communications director for the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, the non-profit organization that sells the dot-ca domain name. He’s self-admittedly biased because of who he works for, but he’s not wrong in advocating for businesses of all sizes to control their own online fate.

He joins Do Not Pass Go this week to warn of the dangers of businesses putting too much effort into opaquely run platforms, and to share his advice on how they can own rather than rent their respective online presences.

It was a bad week for Air Canada, starting with the horrendous news of the crash at New York’s Laguardia Airport that killed two pilots and injured many passengers on board one of the airline’s flights from Montreal.

While the investigation into causes is still ongoing, early accounts suggest that traffic controllers at the airport had trouble tracking the fire truck that collided with the plane, with fingers also being pointed at the deficiency of staff in general.

The situation took an unexpected turn on Monday after Air Canada chief executive Michael Rousseau released a video expressing his condolences to the pilots’ families. The video was in English only, which kicked off a fresh furor over the Montreal-based airline CEO’s inability to speak French.

Rousseau has repeatedly drawn fire for his lack of bilingualism while heading Canada’s national carrier. In 2021, he sparked criticism for saying that he had lived in Montreal for 14 years without having to learn French, after which he promised to take lessons. He has repeatedly been called by the federal Transport Committee to answer for the issue.

Quebec’s Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette said this week’s video proves the airline CEO is a “repeat offender.” He was joined by provincial politicians from various parties in his call for Rousseau’s resignation. Even Prime Minister Mark Carney chimed in, saying that he was “very disappointed” with Rousseau’s mono-lingual apology and that it “lacked compassion.”

Rousseau responded with a statement in which he apologized for his gaffe diverting attention away from the crash itself and the grief of those involved.

The language issue is of key concern to culture hawks, but critics are finding themselves agreeing with Rousseau in a roundabout way – that it’s a distraction from the crash, but also the government’s ongoing refusal to address the airline competition problem.

“This is identity- and token-politics, a good way to divert attention from the airlines shortchanging passengers and sabotaging the [Air Passenger Protection Regulations],” air rights advocate Gabor Lukacs tells Do Not Pass Go, referring to recent revelations regarding the Carney government’s efforts to help airlines avoid paying for a complaints system.

Rather than focusing on language issues, he says, the government should be directing its energy to resolving the growing backlog of passenger complaints – which is at least 88,000 deep, with many taking years to resolve.

Those complaints are multiplying rapidly, with new issues continually arising – such as the revelation this week that Flair Airlines’ luggage measurement bins at airports were actually smaller than those listed online.

“It is ridiculous that the PM would comment on this. Yes, historically, Air Canada is bound by the Official Languages Act. Yes, it would have been nice if the CEO had expressed condolences in French as a matter of courtesy and compassion,” Lukacs says. “But there was no legal obligation for him to do so and convening a committee meeting over this is a theatre. The MPs should spend their time on investigating how airlines disobey the law rather than this kind of symbolic stuff.”

🕺 ENTERTAINMENT & LEISURE

• On a happier note, baseball season is here, woohoo! Things might be a little different this year as far as Blue Jays tickets go if Doug Ford follows through on his promise to ban scalping. The Ontario Premier, who scoffed at Jays’ sky-high playoff prices last fall, recently made headlines for saying that he plans to introduce laws that would make it illegal to re-sell event tickets through the likes of TICKETMASTER and STUBHUB for more than face value. The ROGERS’ owned Blue Jays have taken notice, sending out a survey to season ticket holders asking them how they feel about the proposed ban and whether it will affect their plans to renew. The survey tells recipients that Ford’s move would “limit their ability to offset the cost of an 81-game package by reselling games they cannot attend for more than original purchase price,” before asking “how important is the ability to resell some games above face value to the overall value of your season ticket membership?” Is this a step toward Rogers and the Blue Jays opposing the proposed ban?

  

• Speaking of ROGERS and sports, The Globe and Mail has a great scoop on company scion and executive chairman Edward Rogers trying to get out of paying his MAPLE LEAF SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT partner Larry Tanenbaum for fees related to his late mother’s estate. Rogers is objecting to the $11 million in total compensation that Tanenbaum and two other executors are claiming for dealing with Loretta Anne Rogers’ estate, saying that his MLSE partner appears to have “delegated” his duties to his co-trustees. Tanenbaum’s company Kilmer Sports holds the remaining 25 per cent of MLSE, which owns the Toronto Maple Leafs, Raptors, Argos and TFC, among others, that Rogers does not control. As The Globe points out, the two men have often clashed, with this legal battle being the latest episode. Rogers is also angling to acquire Tananbaum’s remaining stake in MLSE.

• The skiing and snowboarding season may be winding down, but the suing of resort operators is just getting underway. A new class action suit was filed in the U.S. this week against VAIL RESORTS and ALTERRA MOUNTAIN, both based in Colorado, for allegedly inflating lift-ticket prices through “anti-competitive bundling practices tied to their multi-mountain season passes.” The passes in question are Vail’s Epic and Alterra’s Ikon, which give users access to the companies’ respective resorts around the world and run from a few hundred dollars to nearly $2,000 depending on the number of days selected. The lawsuit alleges that resorts are jacking up the price of single-day tickets as a way to “coerce customers into buying their multi-mountain season pass offerings which [skiers] then view as more cost effective.” Vail owns more than 40 resorts in the United States, Australia, Switzerland and Canada, including Whistler Blackcomb. Alterra owns 18 properties in North America, including Blue Mountain in Ontario and Mont Tremblant in Quebec. Paul Pinchbeck, president of the Canadian Ski Council industry advocacy group, says the skiing and snowboarding market in Canada isn’t as concentrated as it is in the U.S., with Vail and Alterra owning only three of the 240 active ski areas here. Many Canadian resorts offer their own passes and work in collaboration with Vail and Alterra even if they aren’t officially under their respective ownership. “Connections to the mega passes allow partner ski areas to expand their market reach in a cost-effective manner with the goal of growing business in the destination ski market,” he tells Do Not Pass Go. “Canada’s ski areas continue to recognize that affordability is high on customer desires and will continue to create and offer new access products and options that are cheaper than the walk-up window pricing on a peak day.” Coincidentally, left-leaning news site Jacobin has a new feature on the “Big Ski” duopoly of Vail and Alterra, and how it’s leading to the decline of the sport. “Costs have gotten so bad that it seems like hardly anyone can afford to ski these days,” it says.

• Not only does spring mean the end of skiing and the advent of baseball, it also brings the beginning of roller coaster season. As if to remind everyone of that, the Competition Bureau this week filed an amended application of its junk fee case against Canada’s Wonderland, the largest amusement park in Ontario. The Bureau is accusing the park’s owner, North Carolina-based SIX FLAGS, of advertising “unattainable” prices, since additional junk fees – such as a processing charge of up to $9.99 – are stacked on top of ticket purchases. The filing cites several “aggravating factors,” such as Wonderland being the only amusement park in Canada that continues to charge junk fees, Six Flags doing so despite the Bureau’s previously successful enforcement actions against rental car companies and most recently Cineplex for the same, not to mention related settlements with satellite and streaming radio providers. You can almost hear the exasperation coming through in the application: “Despite the information available, Wonderland engaged in and continues to engage in the conduct at issue.”

• It’s not your imagination – streaming prices are rising, according to a new report by Canada’s Convergence Research. The 10 leading providers, which in Canada include NETFLIX, DISNEY+, AMAZON PRIME VIDEO and CRAVE, hiked prices by an average of 7 per cent last year, which follows an 8-per-cent increase in 2024. Those price increases are pushing consumers toward cheaper ad-supported packages, Convergence says, which is almost certainly the streaming companies’ strategy. Right on time, Netflix has announced another slew of prices hikes, though MobileSyrup reports that these aren’t necessarily applying to Canada.

• In case you missed it, we broke the news here this week that the Competition Bureau is reviewing the $110-billion mega-merger between PARAMOUNT and WARNER BROS. With both companies having significant film and television production and streaming presences in Canada, the review might be expected, but questions abound over what the competition enforcement agency can do about it:

🛒 GROCERIES & RETAIL

• City Councillors in TORONTO have voted overwhelmingly in favour of going ahead with a municipally owned grocery store pilot project, with a vision and strategy plan to be presented in the second quarter of 2027. The review will also consider what policy levers the city has to “prevent price gouging by grocery and other retailers, including ensuring retailers licensed by the City are transparent about rates and prices and disclose the use of consumers’ personal data and algorithmic pricing.”

• A shout-out to The Peak this week for highlighting the rebound going on with independent bookstores in Canada, many of which have united under the booksellers.ca banner as an alternative to both AMAZON and INDIGO. The newsletter points out that the website, run by Les Librairies indépendantes du Québec, has expanded to eight more provinces to go with its English version launch. Indie stores are having something of a resurgence, with approximately 300 across Canada as of 2024. The website will allow these indie stores to ship books for cheaper and to offer a wider selection, according to The Peak.

💾 BIG TECH

• A Los Angeles jury handed down a landmark ruling this week in finding GOOGLE’s YouTube and Facebook owner META guilty of cultivating social media addiction in kids. The court awarded a 20-year-old woman known as Kaley $6 million (U.S.) for mental health damages brought on by her addiction to the social media platforms. Mental health advocates are hailing the verdict as a huge win as it sets a precedent for hundreds of other similar cases currently winding through U.S. courts. Canada is seeing such cases as well, with a B.C. woman last month launching a similar lawsuit against Meta. The tech giants disagree with the findings in the U.S. and say they plan to appeal.

• Mark Zuckerberg’s META is having a helluva bad week, with a New Mexico court also ordering the social media company to pay $375 million (U.S.) for misleading users over the safety of its platforms for children. A jury there found that the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, endangered kids by exposing them to sexually explicit material and contact with sexual predators. The company intends to appeal.

• GOOGLE had some slightly better results, with a U.S. court this week throwing out an antitrust case brought by two publishers who alleged that the company has monopolized the online news market with its search business. Amit Mehta is the same judge who in 2024 ruled that Google was indeed a monopoly in search and online advertising. In this case, he found that the two publishers – Helena World Chronicle and Emmerich Newspapers – did not sufficiently prove that they had been harmed by the company’s actions in the search market.

🥊 COMPETITION

• In case you missed it, recently retired Federal Court Chief Justice and Competition Tribunal head PAUL CRAMPTON joined the Do Not Pass Go podcast this week to discuss how recent law changes might affect future merger and abuse-of-dominance challenges in Canada:

🚨 COMING UP

Whether you’re an influencer, small business or large enterprise, it’s never a good idea to hitch your wagon too tightly to someone else’s train. Spencer Callaghan, director of brand communications for the CANADIAN INTERNET REGISTRATION AUTHORITY, joins the podcast on Monday to discuss the dangers of putting too much effort into platforms that can pull the rug out at any time and the importance of owning your online presence.

Paramount’s $110-billion (U.S.) proposed takeover of Warner Bros.-Discovery has hit another potential obstacle, this time in Canada, with the Competition Bureau launching a review of the deal for its potential effects on film and television production and streaming markets here.

The Bureau confirms it opened the investigation on Mar. 12. The enforcement agency is mandated to review mergers when the value of involved Canadian assets or sales exceed $93 million (Canadian), or when the combined assets or revenues of the parties from or into Canada exceed $400 million. It can also voluntarily review deals that don’t meet those criteria.

A Bureau spokesperson would not comment on which of those two situations apply, though industry observers familiar with the deal say the proposed acquisition likely surpasses the required thresholds.

“When you consider all the assets Paramount is acquiring – HBO, Warner Bros., Discovery cable and content licenses, WB theatrical distribution, WB Games, DC Comics distribution, physical offices and staff – it wouldn’t be surprising if it meets the threshold,” says one.

“The larger question is whether [the Bureau believes] it will lessen competition and require divestiture of any assets.” (Story continues below)

Los Angeles-based Paramount Skydance announced the acquisition on Feb. 27 after a protracted battle with Netflix for New York-based Warner Bros.-Discovery. The streaming giant bowed out the day before, saying that the price had gone too high.

On the one hand, the deal isn’t expected to draw much resistance from federal U.S. antitrust officials, given Paramount founder David Ellison’s ties to President Donald Trump, but state-level is a different story.

Antitrust officials in California and New York in particular have already announced they are investigating the merger’s effects on their respective entertainment industry workforces.

Both Paramount and Warner Bros. have significant operations in Canada. Paramount’s recent film and TV productions here include Paw Patrol: The Movie and the upcoming Len & Cub streaming series, while Warner Bros. has produced The Last of Us and many of its DC Comics television and film properties, including Arrow and Suicide Squad, in Canada. Warner Bros. also maintains a games studio in Montreal.

Both companies also license their films to Canadian movie theatres and are major players in streaming. HBO content makes up the core of Bell Media’s Crave, which is a “significant streaming player in Canada,” according to Convergence Research president Brahm Eiley. “Paramount+ is as well, but less so.”

Ellison has said he intends to merge Paramount+ and HBO Max, Warner Bros.’ main streaming service, so that it can better compete globally against Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video. In response, Bell Media has said it has a long-term deal with Warner Bros. that will keep HBO content on Crave “for the foreseeable future,” though the company has not specified the exact time frame.

Paramount declined to comment on the Canadian review.

Competition advocates say the Bureau is warranted in investigating and demanding concessions or conditions if necessary.

“We’re talking about both production and consumption here,” says Keldon Bester, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project. “On the production side you’re removing a buyer while on the streaming side prices are already rising and consolidation isn’t a recipe to slow that down.”

The merger is also subject to possible scrutiny from Canadian Heritage Minister Marc Miller, who could implement a Cultural Sector Investment Review. Such reviews typically look into whether investments into cultural businesses by foreign entities are of net benefit to Canada. Heritage did not return a request for comment.

Despite that, at least a few competition lawyers in Toronto are doubtful that Canadian authorities will take much action on the merger.

“The Bureau would be interested in at least kicking the tires on this just to satisfy themselves,” says one. “They want to be seen at least giving it some consideration.”

“I just don’t know where they would go with it,” says another. “It seems to be one of those exercises on American mergers that Canada gets perfunctorily involved in.”

But that’s exactly what lawmakers did back in the 1980s, when they borrowed from the Scandinavian country’s Market Court to create the Competition Tribunal – Canada’s court of first resort when it comes to assessing mergers and abuse of dominance cases.

As the name implies, it’s not precisely a court. The Tribunal is indeed made of up judges, but they are often joined by lay members that jointly hear cases as a panel. As per the Swedish approach, the idea has always been to couple real-world economic and market knowledge with legal expertise.

Prior to retiring this past October, Paul Crampton served on the federal court for 16 years, with 14 of those as its Chief Justice. His duties included heading the Competition Tribunal, where he presided over some of the biggest and most contentious cases in Canadian history – including perhaps the biggest and most contentious, the Rogers-Shaw merger in 2023.

He joins the Do Not Pass Go podcast this week to discuss how recent, badly needed updates to Canada’s competition laws are likely to affect future Tribunal cases – and, of course, we talk about that Rogers-Shaw case.

Algorithmic pricing took centre stage this week as Manitoba introduced legislation to ban it, closely followed by a national poll that found most Canadians want it made illegal or strictly regulated.

The province’s government signalled back in December that it would take action against algorithmic pricing – also known as surveillance or predatory pricing, which involves charging customers differently for products and services based on what sellers know about them.

Manitoba’s Bill 49, the Business Practices Amendment Act, was publicly introduced on Tuesday and, if passed, would label the use of “personalized algorithmic pricing” online and in stores as an unfair business practice.

A person found guilty of using a customer’s purchase history, socio-economic status or income data, medical history or geographic location to set prices could face a fine of up to $100,000 or 12 months in jail, while a corporate entity could be fined up to $300,000 for a first offence.

Most Canadians support such a ban, according to a poll released Wednesday by Abacus Data, with 52 per cent of respondents saying algorithmic pricing should be outlawed while 31 per cent said it should be allowed but more strictly regulated.

Algorithmic pricing has long been the norm online, used by the likes of airlines and hotels to set prices based on customer data and fluctuating demand. But its implementation has been spreading like wildfire to everything including concert tickets, rents and groceries. Just this past week, for example, news emerged that the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post was getting in on the action by charging subscribers based on their personal data.

Manitoba’s government has taken criticism over the lack of evidence that this sort of pricing was happening in the province, but Premier Wab Kinew this week countered by pointing out that its existence elsewhere was proof enough that it was coming.

“We know that with the increasing cost of groceries and cost of living for Manitobans, that they’re feeling the pinch,” he told reporters. “And we want to make sure that we’re working to get ahead of this issue to ensure that Manitobans aren’t subjected to those same types of risks.”

Pro-competition advocates cheered Manitoba’s ban, but it may just be the veritable band-aid on the real problem – as suggested by Jim Balsillie in a recent Globe and Mail op-ed and here on the Do Not Pass Go podcast last month.

As the former BlackBerry co-chief executive points out, Canada’s lax privacy laws are enabling companies and organizations to harvest vast amounts of consumer data – the actual fuel that enables algorithmic and surveillance pricing. “It’s a new form of authoritarianism,” he said on the podcast.

Balsillie had challenged the federal government to enact stronger privacy protections, but Parliament so far appears to be going in the opposite direction. The Carney government last week rejected amendments proposed by the Senate to Bill C-4 – the “Making Life More Affordable for Canadians Act” – that would have added privacy restrictions and limits on how political parties can use voters’ information.

While Bill C-4 largely focuses on implementing tax measures that are indeed related to affordability, its fourth section has been criticized for clauses that exempt political parties from provincial privacy laws. Green Party leader Elizabeth May this week said her fellow Members of Parliament should be “ashamed” for rejecting the Senate’s suggestions to limit those exemptions.

Balsillie applauded Manitoba’s move on pricing in an email to Do Not Pass Go, but reiterated that privacy laws must go hand in hand with affordability measures.

“To properly address these issues, it’s strong privacy and regulations, not or. So, I expect Manitoba to follow this initiative with appropriate privacy legislation,” he says. “As for C-4 Part 4, how can we trust federal political parties to properly govern the digital sphere when they fight so hard to keep it lawless for themselves?” 

🕺 ENTERTAINMENT

• Speaking of provincial governments trying to tame out-of-control pricing schemes, Ontario looks to be joining the growing number of jurisdictions that are banning ticket scalping. Premier Doug Ford posted as much on X/Twitter on Friday:

  The Toronto Star story he points to outlines how the province plans to outlaw selling tickets for more than face value. Ford of course scrapped the previous Liberal government’s legislation in 2019 that would have capped resale prices, calling the measures “unenforceable.” The change of heart may be driven by the realization that scalpers are now using bot armies to instantly buy up all event tickets as soon as they go on sale on TICKETMASTER, then re-listing them seconds later at vastly inflated prices. The United Kingdom, Australia, Quebec and others have realized this and have enacted similar bans.

• On the topic of Ticketmaster, the U.S. antitrust trial of its parent LIVE NATION continued this week despite federal prosecutors announcing a settlement with the company last week that surprised everyone – including the judge and the government’s own prosecutor. With 30 states forging ahead with the case, Live Nation chief executive and Thunder Bay, Ont. native Michael Rapino took the stand on Thursday to defend against charges that his company has monopolized the live events business. Rapino deplored as “disgusting” some emails released last week in which his top ticketing executives bragged about “robbing fans blind.” Prosecuting attorneys, however, pointed out that those same executives are still employed and don’t appear to have been disciplined. “We don’t fire easily,” Rapino countered. Separately but related, the question everyone is wondering about last week’s politicized settlement is: What does Kid Rock think about all this? Mr. Rock, who has been perhaps the most outspoken critic of Live Nation’s monopoly but simultaneously a big Donald Trump stan, isn’t mincing words. “This is a joke,” he told Fox & Friends.

• Over in the streaming world, AMAZON is raising the cost of its ad-free Prime Video tier by $2 (U.S.) to $4.99 a month in the United States, though it’s unclear if this affects Canadian subscribers. That fee is on top of the Prime program cost, which is $139 a year in the U.S. or $99 (Canadian). Meanwhile, at least one market analyst believes NETFLIX is free to raise prices now that it no longer has regulatory scrutiny to worry about after backing out of trying to acquire WARNER BROS.

• And speaking of WARNER BROS., the head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust division says PARAMOUNT’s planned acquisition of the movie studio will “absolutely not” have a fast track to approval because of political ties. Paramount is, of course, owned by President Donald Trump buddy Larry Ellison. “The idea that somehow enforcement has been politicized is ludicrous,” Omeed Assefi, the DOJ’s acting assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, tells Reuters. No word on whether he winked or was crossing his fingers behind his back while saying that.

📱 TELECOM

• The latest CBC Marketplace takes aim at Canadians’ mounting frustrations with getting service – any service – from the nation’s big telecom providers. The program and associated article delve into the Kafka-esque nightmare that is dealing with the likes of BELL, ROGERS and TELUS over price increases, contract issues and other problems. Highlighting the skyrocketing number of complaints being placed with the national ombudsman, CBC talks to customers who lament interminable wait times, dropped calls and incorrect information when they are lucky enough to get through. As one customer says, “It’s impossible to get a single right answer that is consistent through each support agent.” The piece notes that Spain is introducing legislation that would cap service call wait times at three minutes, while Canadian Industry Minister Melanie Joly – who oversees telecom policies and who recently proclaimed that the government was “hawkish” on competition – sidesteps questions about similar action here. A recent CRTC report painted a rosy picture of service prices supposedly improving, but the steadily increasing wave of customer complaints strongly suggests declining competitive intensity in the sector. It’s worth noting that both Joly and CRTC chair Vicky Eatrides have declined invitations to appear on the Do Not Pass Go podcast, though the door remains open for both.

🛒 GROCERIES

• Toronto Councillor Anthony Perruzza made headlines last week by announcing that he wants the city to test run some PUBLIC GROCERY STORES in an effort to create more competition in the sector and drive prices lower. Both the Toronto Star and CBC this week delve into how that might work, which includes conversations with Aaron Vansintjan, policy manager with Food Secure Canada. Vantsintjan tells the news outlets the same thing he explained on our podcast back in January – that public grocery stores absolutely can work if they’re set up with the right distribution network.

• Grocery giant LOBLAW last week informed customers of a “low-level” data breach, but this week hacking trackers have suggested the company is downplaying the incident. According to one report, more than 75 million Salesforce records related to Loblaw may be affected. For its part, the company maintains that customer passwords, health information and credit card data were not compromised.

• The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is cracking down on grocery chains including LOBLAW and SOBEYS for misleading shoppers by promoting imported foods as Canadian products. A number of $10,000 fines – for each incident – have already been issued, with the agency also confirming that it is investigating labelling and advertising practices overseen by Sobey’s head office.

💾 BIG TECH

• The bad news is a U.S. judge has rejected a class-action case against GOOGLE that alleged the company was overcharging Canadian customers of its Android app store. The good news is that the same judge affirmed Canada as a sovereign state in doing so, which is not nothing in this day and age. The case was brought last year by British Columbia resident Connor Hurley in the U.S. northern California district, alleging that Google was using anti-competitive means to force Canadians to pay “supra-competiive” prices on apps. This week, however, U.S. District Judge ‌James Donato ruled that, “this case concerns Canadian consumers purchasing products in Canada” and that U.S. antitrust laws do not “have any application to conduct within the sovereign state of Canada.” Hopefully the president is listening.

🥊 COMPETITION

• To get back to MANITOBA for a second, we missed this last week but it’s too important not to mention this week: aside from getting tough on surveillance pricing, the province is also moving on implementing laws that allow individuals and businesses to fiddle with and fix the goods they buy. Bill 15, the Consumer Protection Amendment Act, seeks to counter the endemic lock-down by manufacturers of a wide range of products, ranging from smartphones to tractors. These lock-downs force consumers to repair their goods only with the manufacturer or its licensed agents, which inevitably drives up costs. Between this and the algorithmic pricing ban… is anyone else who doesn’t already live there thinking about moving to Manitoba?

• The COMPETITION BUREAU has released a report on how shared kitchens and food hubs can make it easier for small- and medium-sized business to enter the food market. By sharing commercial-grade kitchens, processing equipment, storage facilities and packaging systems, small companies can reduce costs and their regulatory burdens, the report says. It’s a bit like getting a roommate when you can’t afford the rent on your own.

• The CANADIAN ANTI-MONOPOLY PROJECT is hiring. The advocacy group is looking for a communications and partnership lead who can write, edit and coordinate with other organizations. CAMP is accepting applications till April 3, check out the position here.

• And finally, in case you missed it, don’t forget to check out this week’s Do Not Pass Go podcast, in which Social Capital Partners chair Jon Shell extols the virtues of EMPLOYEE-OWNED TRUSTS, a new structure that allows owners to sell their businesses to their workers:

🚨 COMING UP

Ever wondered just what the heck the COMPETITION TRIBUNAL is? We’ve got you covered, with recently retired federal court Chief Justice PAUL CRAMPTON joining the podcast on Monday to talk about what this court-but-not-a-court does and how recent changes to Canada’s competition laws are likely to shake things up.

Welcome to another edition of the monthly Do Not Pass Go Lobby Report. This is an ongoing effort to shed light on who’s trying to influence who in Ottawa, and as always, it’s a continuing work in progress. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support work like this.

As usual, we’re highlighting the corporate interests that are lobbying the most in a given month and the public office holders who are meeting with them the most frequently. This month’s edition, covering all federal lobbying communications for the month of February, features a small format tweak. One individual company and office holder are being spotlighted for standing out from the pack for one reason or another.

The overall top lobbyists for the month by total communications reports were Les Producteurs de lait du Quebec (124), the Saskatchewan Industrial and Mining Suppliers Association (68), the Semiahmoo First Nation (55), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (51, or 70 if CUPE B.C. is included), and the University of Saskatchewan (35).

CORPORATE LOBBYIST OF THE MONTH:

Secure Future Research (34)

Leading all corporate lobbyists in total communications reports for the month is U.K.-based Secure Future Research Ltd., which operates as ControlAI. This isn’t your typical entrant on our list of top business lobbyists because the company is a non-profit dedicated to warning lawmakers about the dangers – both economic and existential – of artificial intelligence.

The company’s listed Canadian representative is Samuel Buteau, a research scientist and consulting program officer based in Gatineau. Among the company’s total 34 reported communications for February, Buteau testified before Canada’s Senate Committee on Human Rights on Feb. 23, telling members that “AI companies are currently gambling with the life of every human being on the planet.”

The company met broadly with public office holders, mainly Members of Parliament, throughout the month. Buteau did not return a request for comment for further details on his communications.

Suncor (30)

Calgary-based Suncor placed second in February, with most of its lobbying focused on Natural Resources Canada and the department of Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). The company’s communications were scattered throughout the month, with the biggest name being a meeting with deputy ECCC minister Mollie Johnson on Feb. 26.

Reported details for that communication including discussing regulatory frameworks “to enable successful closure and reclamation of oil sands mines.”

Separately, three days earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in a Colorado-based climate accountability lawsuit against Suncor and ExxonMobil. The news is considered a positive for the two companies as the state’s supreme court refused to dismiss the lawsuit, which has been brought by the city of Boulder.

Enbridge (28)

The natural gas company, also based in Calgary, directed much of its lobbying in February to ECCC and Natural Resources Canada, as well as Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs (CIRNA), with many communications happening on Feb. 9 and 10.

Valerie Gideon, deputy CIRNA minister, was the biggest name lobbied, who on Feb. 10 discussed “regulatory efficiency, as it pertains to environmental assessments and climate policies and taxation” as well as the North American energy market, indigenous engagement and pipeline projects, according to reported details.

Enbridge has been clashing with indigenous groups over pipelines, including the recently begun Line 5 project between Wisconsin and Ontario. As climate news site Grist points out, the company has agreements to pay for riot suits, training and policing hours for Wisconsin law enforcement involved in protests over its projects.

Air Products Canada (28)

The Canadian subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based Air Products and Chemicals did all of its monthly lobbying between Feb. 17 and 19, focusing on Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED), Finance Canada and ECCC, with the biggest name again being ECCC deputy minister Mollie Johnson.

The company was pushing for tax credits under several government programs, including the Clean Hydrogen Investment Tax Credit and the Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage Investment Tax Credit.

Air Products has been facing criticism for several years now over delays to a “blue” hydrogen project in Edmonton, which the federal government helped fund with $300 million through its strategic innovation fund, as well as Alberta’s contribution of $161 million. Last year, the company said its Edmonton operation was an “under-performing asset” that wasn’t expected to be profitable.

Agnico Eagle Mines (27)

Gold miner Agnico Eagle Mines makes its second appearance on Do Not Pass Go’s monthly lobby report with 27 reported communications in February after posting 44 in December. The company focused mainly on Employment and Social Development Canada, National Defence and Natural Resources Canada, with many meetings happening on Feb. 5.

Its reported messages involved advocating for “the benefits of mining to the Canadian economy, including indigenous reconciliation” and raising awareness of new projects in Nunavut.

The company last month increased its ownership stake to 13 per cent in fellow Toronto-based resources company Maple Gold Mines.

LOBBIED OFFICE HOLDER OF THE MONTH:

Erin O’Brien, Natural Resources Canada (34)

Though she only placed second on the list of most-lobbied public office holders in February, O’Brien – assistant deputy minister and member of the Natural Resources Committee – is notable because 12 of those records involved Shell Canada.

Communications with the company took place throughout the month and list “decarbonization strategies” and “timely fiscal and regulatory policies and programs to advance energy transition and diversification” among reported details.

Neither O’Brien nor Natural Resources Canada responded to requests for further information on the meetings. Shell, meanwhile, was in the news last month for needing an exploration breakthrough to make up for a major expected shortage of oil output due to its maturing supply.

36: Galen Richardson, director of stakeholder relations, Privacy Council Office. This is the third lobby report we’ve published here that highlights individual leaders, and this is the third time Richardson has made the top five. In February, he met with a broad array of companies and organizations, including B.C.-based shipping service Trigon Pacific Terminals, the Supplier Diversity Alliance Canada advocacy group, and Whitehorse-based solar energy provider Solvest.

34: Paul Moen, chief of staff, ISED. Moen also met broadly, including three times with Australian mining company Wyloo, twice with B.C.-based carbon removal provider Svante, and twice with Air Products Canada, mentioned above.

32: Brenna Walsh, senior policy advisor, ECCC. Walsh’s communications for the month were broad, including a pair of meetings with the Environmental Defence Canada advocacy group, Calgary-based natural gas producer Tourmaline and B.C.-based ship fuel provider Seaspan Energy.

31: Yasmin Atassi, senior policy advisor, ISED. Like Richardson and O’Brien, Atassi is on her way to becoming an all-star on this list. In February, her meetings including three each with Wyloo, Honda Canada and Ford Canada.