A small housekeeping note before we get into things – we’re tweaking our publishing schedule to be more in line with how you guys are reading, watching and listening. That’s why you’re seeing this round-up on Saturday, its new home. Podcasts are shifting to Tuesdays from Thursdays, with most Wednesdays featuring scoops and other good stuff for paid subscribers. With that, let’s get to it!
Among the headline news in a really busy competition news week was an odd judgment against Rogers, which got slapped with a $15 million fine plus legal costs by the Competition Tribunal for falsely advertising its wireless plans as “unlimited.”
The case was brought in 2024 by the Competition Bureau, which objected to the cable giant’s marketing of its “Infinite” plans. The agency maintained that the advertising was misleading, given that customers were having their connection speeds significantly reduced after hitting a set amount of data usage.
The Tribunal’s terse “information note,” released on Wednesday, does not provide details or reasons for the decision. It simply notes that Rogers’ constitutional challenge of the case was dismissed and that a more fulsome judgment will be released within 10 business days. Rogers must also publish a corrective notice.
“The Tribunal is working with the Commissioner and Rogers to identify confidential or competitively sensitive information in its confidential reasons that will be redacted from the public version,” the note reads.
The Bureau published a similarly short statement, noting that Canadians rely on accurate and truthful information when choosing services such as wireless plans.
“Misleading advertising can distort consumer choice, erode confidence in the marketplace, and disadvantage businesses that compete fairly,” said Interim Competition Commissioner Jeanne Pratt in the statement. “We look forward to the Tribunal publishing the details of its decision in the coming weeks.”
Rogers, however, stands by its advertising and is “considering next steps.”
“We introduced unlimited data plans in 2019 to deliver great value to our customers,” says a release on the company’s website. “These plans are commonplace in the industry and reflected a significant and positive development for consumers and small businesses.”
The company notes the Bureau was seeking a penalty of $135 million. The $15 million award is slightly more than the $13 million the agency was ordered to pay Rogers in 2023 for unsuccessfully challenging the company’s $20 billion acquisition of Shaw. In ordering the costs at the time, the Tribunal said the Bureau’s approach to blocking that deal was “unreasonable.”
Some consumer advocates say the judgment is important for ensuring proper information in the marketplace, but also warn that regulators and policy makers will need to ensure that Rogers doesn’t pass along the penalties to consumers in the form of price increases.
“Consumers should never be expected to bear the cost of penalties imposed on any provider, whether through higher fees or otherwise,” says Tahira Dawood, acting general counsel for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. “That is why scrutiny of new charges, meaningful competition and the ability to switch providers are so important.”
Other advocates say it’s difficult to determine whether the false advertising judgment is a win or a defeat for the Bureau without seeing the Tribunal’s reasoning. The Bureau reportedly asked for $15 million in an administrative penalty plus customer refunds, or $135 million if the Tribunal declined those refunds. But the Tribunal’s note makes no mention of refunds.
By comparison, the Tribunal in 2024 ordered Cineplex to pay $39 million in a drip-pricing case that similarly centred around the theatre company misleading consumers. In that case, the Tribunal also did not order customer refunds, calling them impractical.
“An administrative monetary penalty is paid to the Crown, so if refunds weren’t ordered, affected customers get nothing from the [Rogers] decision,” says Neil Hartung, a lawyer with the Consumers Council of Canada. “So, against $135 million sought and a penalty well below what was asked for, Rogers may be the one opening the champagne today, whatever the headline number says.”
🎧 ON THE PODCAST THIS WEEK:
Can Economics Defeat Fascism? Isabella Weber Thinks So
Long-term anti-monopoly enforcement coupled with short-term measures like price controls on essentials are needed to restore faith in democracy
☎️ TELECOM
Canada’s slow, resistant slog toward accepting shared networks as the future – and reality – of the telecom business took another step this week with BELL announcing it is selling off a minority stake in its cellphone towers to CAISSE DE DEPOT ET PLACEMENT DU QUEBEC.
The $2.5 billion sale gives Quebec’s pension fund manager a 49.9-per-cent stake in the tentatively titled TowerCo, with Bell retaining control. The company plans to use the sale process to pay down debt and expand its data-centre business.
Bell is the last of the big three wireless carriers to engage in such a sale, with TELUS and ROGERS doing the same last year. The Caisse was involved in both those deals, acquiring the same size stake in Telus’ towers and joining a consortium that includes Blackstone and the Canadian Pension Plan in the case of Rogers.
Most carriers in the United States, Europe and Asia have sold off their towers to third parties, who have then rented space on them to other providers. As a Caisse executive told The Globe and Mail this week, the pension fund’s plan is to “entice other service providers to hang their gear on what used to be Bell-branded towers.”
Frank Brown, a concerned citizen from Aurora, Ont., has opened a petition with Parliament to cap telecom phone service wait times at 10 minutes. The petition, which is sponsored by Conservative MP Kathy Borrelli, representing Windsor–Tecumseh–Lakeshore, requests that Parliament direct the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to establish the maximum hold time as a “clear, measurable and enforceable customer-service access standard for telecommunications providers.” The petition needs 500 validated signatures before it can be presented in the House, and was just shy at 200 at the time of this writing. Brown had previously run a similar Change.org petition that drew nearly 1,200 signatures. The Parliamentary petition is open until Nov. 26.
The Toronto Star has a story on Marina Pavlovic, the University of Ottawa law professor who is fighting an attempt by TELUS to make it harder for consumers to file complaints with the telecom industry ombudsman. Telus says customers should be required to show evidence that they have escalated their issues with providers to so-called “second-level” support before they can file complaints with the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications-television Services. But in her own filing to the CRTC, which oversees the CCTS, Pavlovic says consumers have no way of distinguishing between what level of support they are receiving. She wants companies to inform customers about the CCTS as soon as they complain. “The goal should be fewer unresolved problems,” she tells the paper. “Making complaints harder to file could reduce the count without resolving those problems.”
Capping off a busy news week in telecom, the federal government also announced a “roadmap to improve competition and increase choice for Canadians.” The plan hinges on providing consumers with more choices and better prices while ensuring investment in high-quality networks. The document itself largely outlines already implemented measures, such as enabling large telcos to access each others’ networks on a wholesale basis and further funding for alternative infrastructure models, as well some aspirational efforts, including speeding up CRTC decisions and protecting consumers from rights violations. We’ll take a deeper dive into this roadmap soon… stay tuned.
I try to avoid opinionating whenever possible these days, but I can’t always avoid others asking me to do so. This week I chatted telecom with broadcaster Lynda Steele on her new podcast, Change My Mind (see below), and penned an op-ed for the Financial Post on Meta’s proposed changes to its website scraping terms. Check ‘em out!
🇨🇦 SOVEREIGNTY
We’ve made an executive decision here to no longer treat sovereignty and competition as separate issues, because they really are one and the same. After all, Canada’s attempts to limit its exposure and dependency on an increasingly hostile United States is really just another way of saying the nation is looking for more choice – and therefore more competitors – for the things it needs.
In other words, Canada as a nation is learning what Canadians as a people have long been experiencing – a lack of meaningful choices when it comes to so many basic necessities is existentially problematic.
In that vein, Canada and the European Union concluded their two-day summit in Montreal this week with a joint statement to co-operate on a number of fronts – especially in trying to limit their reliance and vulnerability to U.S. tech firms.
The two jurisdictions announced they have concluded substantial negotiations on a digital trade agreement that sets rules for online commerce, an updated pact on policing anti-competitive behaviour, and a deal to facilitate European investment in Canadian resources.
“We are working toward the deepest possible partnership, short of accession, with Canada becoming the European Union’s first associate member,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said at a press conference on Friday (see video below).
Carney also said that he will begin negotiations for Canadian access to Galileo, the EU’s GPS satellite navigation system, to create an alternative to U.S. and Chinese-owned systems. Canada and the EU are also working to connect their payment systems to speed up financial transactions between the two.
The government also used the summit to announce that it is taking a $1.6 billion stake in Toronto-based AI company COHERE. The stake is part of $7 billion in new investment announced by the company, giving it a valuation of $36 billion – and thus making it Canada’s most valuable private technology firm.
🛒 GROCERIES & RETAIL
Delivery company DOORDASH has launched a $17 billion (U.S.) bid for rival INSTACART. The companies say the deal is slated to close in early 2028, indicating they expect to meet resistance from competition regulators, largely in the United States. Here in Canada, where both companies are active, the Competition Bureau also confirms it’s going to have a look at the merger. The Bureau and DoorDash are already at odds, with a case regarding the company’s alleged drip pricing currently in front of the Competition Tribunal.
The Walrus has a particularly good piece on the dangers of consolidation in the farming sector. The story documents the rapid fall from grace of Saskatchewan’s mega-ag business MONETTE FARMS and how it is “sending shockwaves across the Prairies.” As farmer Kristjan Hebert puts it, farms are having to consolidate in order to keep pace with the growing leverage of similarly merging seed and chemical companies. “They’ve turned us into contract numbers everywhere: grain contracts, equipment contracts,” he says. “We’re not a farm anymore, we’re a number—until you get to a critical mass and can negotiate that. If we don’t, we lose extreme amounts of negotiating power.” And when farms merge, they inevitably bend toward a culture of nurturing the enterprise rather than growing food. Check out the piece, it’s a good read.
WE’RE ON DISCORD!
Have got something to say about the state of competition in Canada? We’ve just launched on Discord, so jump in and join the conversation!
✈️ AIRLINES
The Competition Bureau believes that a code-share deal involving AIR CANADA and U.S. carrier UNITED AIRLINES will harm competition on 10 routes between Canada and the United States, leading to higher pricing.
The proposed arrangement would also contravene a 2012 consent agreement the Bureau reached with the airlines, which prohibits co-ordination on routes that connect Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver with Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Houston, New York, San Francisco and Washington.
The Bureau filed its findings as advice with Transportation Minister Stephen MacKinnon, who is conducting an inquiring into the airlines’ coordination proposal.
The airlines have said that they plan to apply to the Competition Tribunal to have the 2012 agreement lifted if McKinnon approves their deal.
Liberal members of the Standing Committee on Finance this week voted down a proposal that would require airlines including AIR CANADA and WESTJET to pay interest on compensation claims that are withheld to passengers. Ryan Turnbull, MP for Whitby, said it would be “redundant” to require interest to be added since the government has strengthened penalties for repeated offences. “That’s significant teeth in this legislation and enforcement powers,” he said. Consumer advocates disagree, saying airlines face no penalties for dragging compensation claims out. “The Liberals are unwittingly creating a positive incentive for airlines to refuse to pay passengers cash compensation that is owed to them, use it as an interest free loan, and then in two-three years eventually pay up,” says Gabor Lukacs, president of Air Passenger Rights. “From a consumer perspective, it is of course, also unfair – you have to pay interest on any arrears, and on your credit card balance, why should the airlines be treated differently?”
🥊 COMPETITION
The Competition Bureau has issued an open letter to the provinces urging them to take action against non-compete clauses in employment contracts.
As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development reported in a study this summer, non-competes are particularly prevalent in Canada, with more and more employers using them despite their questionable enforceability.
Ontario prohibits such clauses and the Canadian government has proposed similar limits in sectors that fall under federal regulation, but most of the other provinces have no restrictions.
“Governments can curb the unnecessary use of non-competes while preserving legitimate business protections and expanding employers’ access to talent,” said Interim Competition Commissioner Jeanne Pratt in a release.
“Doing so can strengthen competition for workers, support new business entry and growth, and help raise household incomes. We therefore encourage provincial and territorial governments to take coordinated action to limit the widespread use of non-compete agreements.”
🚨 COMING UP
If you missed our report from last week’s Employee Ownership Conference in Vancouver, or if you just don’t like reading, you’re in luck! This Tuesday on the Do Not Pass Go podcast, we’ve got a special report on EMPLOYEE-OWNED TRUSTS. What are they? Why are they a rare good news story? And why is Canada doing them better than the United Kingdom? Tune in and find out.