November 23, 2025

Welcome to Letters from CAMP, a newsletter on anti-monopoly activity in Canada and abroad, brought to you by the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project. In this instalment we have:

• Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell announces his retirement after seven years at the helm
• CAMP co-founder Robin Shaban lays out the case for competition policy in response to challenges facing Canada
• FTC loses landmark case to break up Meta over social media market definition

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Now let’s dive in.

Canada Needs a Commissioner That Builds on Boswell’s Legacy

After serving nearly seven years as the Commissioner of Competition, head of Canada’s Competition Bureau, Matthew Boswell has announced that he will step down as of December 17^th. Under Boswell’s leadership, the Competition Bureau began its transformation into a modern competition law enforcer. The Bureau pushed for stronger tools to protect competition and consumers, investigated markets like grocery, real estate and gas stations, and picked fights with some of the largest companies in the country and on the planet. The Bureau fought hard but unsuccessfully against the Rogers-Shaw merger in Canada’s oligopoly telecom market, and is currently suing Google for their monopoly in online advertising.

Boswell will be missed, but his successor can build on the work begun during his tenure. In the 2023 and 2024 amendments to the Competition Act, the Bureau was given important new tools to keep Canada’s economy fair, competitive, and affordable. A strong Commissioner that builds on instead of reversing Boswell’s progress will be key to using these tools to deliver for Canadians. This is a critical time. The monopoly tax on Canadians from inflated prices in telecom, banking and grocery costs us billions every year, keeping the cost of living a top concern for citizens. From beyond our borders, major tech companies pose a direct threat to our sovereignty.

If the Carney government truly wants to be hawkish on competition, hiring a worthy successor to Boswell is a necessary first step. Placating the interests of Bay Street with a weak Commissioner would set the stage for further consolidation and rollup across our economy, easing the worries of monopolists and making life less affordable. Instead, Canada’s next Commissioner should take up Boswell’s legacy and complete the evolution of the Competition Bureau into an effective and vigilant defender of the interests of Canadians.

📰 CAMP in the News 📰

• ​If you bought bread in the past two decades, you could be eligible for a payment (CBC Edmonton)
• ​Rogers customers complain of hours spent on hold as service reps laid off (CBC The National)

The Secret Ingredient is Competition Policy

No surprise to readers of Letters, but Canada is facing challenges on multiple fronts. This week, CAMP co-founder Robin Shaban has a new policy memo out with the Public Policy Forum showing how we won’t be able to meet those challenges without a better use of competition policy. Markets do not arise or function in a vacuum. They are shaped by policy, regulation, laws and standards at national and international levels. Competition policy is an essential foundation for fairer markets, creating the conditions for entrepreneurs and businesses to enter and compete in markets.

Across the world, countries are grappling with the effects of consolidated economic power and its effects on our economies and societies. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the outsized role that U.S. technology firms play in how we connect, communicate and engage in commerce every day. Through expansion and acquisition, these firms have established themselves as gatekeepers in key markets. They control not only many technology products and platforms, but infrastructure, advertising, and the marketplaces that vendors and consumers alike depend on.

But this challenge is stirring responses across the globe. In the EU, the UK and Brazil, regulators are building capacity and developing new tools to identify where these players have an outsized influence and begin the process of reining them in. While Canada has made strides in bringing our competition policy in the modern era, our pushback against the dominance of Big Tech remains stalled. More must be done to ensure that Canadian citizens and businesses can benefit from truly fair markets. As Shaban points out, our work is far from over.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Chin, The AI boom must not worsen Alberta’s urban-rural divide (The Hub)
• Schweizer, Grocery Update #117: Making Food Affordable Again. (The Checkout)
• Malone, Canada’s digital sovereignty is crumbling under aggressive U.S. lobbying (The Globe and Mail)

FTC Loses Case to Break Up Meta

Meta has won its antitrust case against the FTC, with the judge rejecting the FTC’s call to separate Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to increase competition in the social networking market. Despite the FTC’s argument that Meta used acquisitions to consolidate their market power, their case failed on its approach to defining the relevant market. The FTC tried to separate social networking from social media, a boundary that Judge Boasberg did not agree with. In his view, Meta has lots of competitors, such as YouTube and TikTok, and the real competition is over a more basic resource, user’s time and attention, that he did not agree Meta held a monopoly over.

The outcome is a disappointing one, given a breakup would straightforwardly provide more competition in both the social media and online advertising markets. It is also a reminder of the value of a more assertive defense of competition when it comes to mergers and acquisitions. When Meta acquired Instagram in 2012, people like antitrust scholar Tim Wu correctly predicted that these mergers and acquisitions would lead to the consolidation of key internet markets. While Instagram and WhatsApp are the most notable, Meta has acquired over one hundred companies over the last twenty years. The result has been a moat that, while appearing to be challenged by companies like TikTok, continues to print bumper crop online advertising profits every quarter.

The fact is that Meta, even if it competes with a few Big Tech rivals, wields an enormous amount of control over user’s time and attention of internet users. Regardless of whether this power is relatively greater than its supposed competitors, it remains a problem from the perspective of competition, privacy, fraud prevention, or child safety. Today, Meta can rest easy, knowing their empire built on emotional manipulation and scams will live to see another day, but the fight for a monopoly free internet continues.

If you have any monopoly tips or stories you'd like to share, drop us a line at hello@antimonopoly.ca

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