Moose, Maple Syrup and Monopolies: Is Canada Finally Taking on Its Oligarchs?
Moose, Maple Syrup and Monopolies: Is Canada Finally Taking on Its Oligarchs?
The anti-monopoly movement has hit Canada, where a political economy revolution has changed the nation's antitrust laws from among the weakest in the world. As goes Canada, so goes the world?
no
A fine example of Betteridge's law.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
One nation that is surprisingly interesting in its competition dynamics is Canada, which compared to the U.S. has historically had a much larger state sector but also physically shares our infrastructure, such as railroads and waterways.
In 2022, our competition regulator, a courageous official named Matthew Boswell, diverged from the path taken by his predecessors and challenged one of the most ossified sectors in the Canadian economy, the telecom industry.
The changes to the Competition Act work in concert with the federal government’s steps in response to the power of Big Tech, with bills last year to mandate contributions from technology companies to support Canadian cultural content and our ailing news industry.
While the Liberals eventually approved the transaction, the Conservatives under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre called on the Deputy Prime Minister to block the acquisition of a competitor by the country’s largest financial institution to preserve competition in the mortgage market.
Though these moves can be written off as political posturing, they mark a recent shift in the relationship between policy makers and concentrated corporate power and create the foundation for the kind of real change we are beginning to see in Canada.
Taking a page from the Biden administration, Canada’s government must also understand that there are a wide array of policy tools that can be brought to bear in the fight to rebalance power in our economy.
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