November 9, 2025

[Apologies for the double send folks, this time with content]

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:

• Budget 2025 brings competition in banking but misses the potential for an anti-monopoly approach to the economy
• Tim Wu’s new book shows Big Tech’s extractive ways and the need for Canada to lead on anti-monopoly
• The U.K.’s CMA takes a second look at the Getty-Shutterstock stock photo merger

If you enjoy Letters, please considering sharing and supporting CAMP

Now let’s dive in.

Budget 2025: Bright Spots but a Missed Opportunity on Competition

What’s in a word? Canada’s 2025 federal budget includes nearly 40 mentions of competition, an improvement from the count in the Liberal’s campaign platform (zero, for reference). At a time when the cost-of-living remains top of mind for Canadians, the increase is a welcome development. But ultimately the substance of the budget leaves Canadians looking for some relief with little to be excited about.

First, the good. The budget outlines a bold approach to open banking, which will allow smaller competitors to enter Canada’s oligopoly banking and financial services sector. Once implemented, it will be easier for Canadians to control their own financial data and move between competing offers from banks. The budget also ends absurd fees for moving investment accounts between providers, further reducing competitive frictions. Rumours of the government moving against non-competes in federally regulated sectors also proved to be true, shifting the balance towards workers in fields like banking, telecommunications, and transportation.

But for many Canadians looking for relief, the budget’s approach to competition will hardly feel “generational.” The budget includes no boost to the resources of Canada’s competition cop, the Competition Bureau that CAMP pushed for in our own pre-budget submission. There is also no action to improve the state of competition in Canada’s food chain, tackling the monopolies in markets from seeds to grocery shelves.

Earlier this fall, the federal government promised to be “hawkish” on competition, but so far, the budget is a slow start to these efforts. A serious commitment to affordability from the federal government means empowering the Competition Bureau, federal regulators, and provincial governments to rein in the monopolists squeezing Canadians. Canadians are in the mood for a transformational approach to competition, and Budget 2025 falls well short of our competitive potential.

Wu: Canada Needs to Stand Up to Big Tech’s Age of Extraction

Tim Wu is on a heater in Canada. In the week of the launch of his new book, The Age of Extraction, Wu has pieces in both the Financial Post and the Globe and Mail. In both pieces, the Columbia professor, CAMP advisory board member, and all-around anti-monopoly champion has the same message: Canada must take more action on combating the monopolies of Big Tech as they transition into the most extractive period of their existence. Big Tech’s arch mirrors that of other historical monopolies: get a pass for creating and connecting new markets, generating efficiencies and growth in the process. But once that phase of growth winds down, the consequences of consolidation become clear, and a new business model based on extraction becomes the norm.

Economic extraction is a familiar feeling to Canadians. In so many aspects of our lives – banks, grocers, telecom, airlines - our markets are shaped by a small number of firms that set the terms of competition. Without true competition, incumbents rather than consumers, workers, or challengers hold the balance of power and make sure to constantly remind us of where we stand. Today the harmful effects of consolidation are clear to see: unaffordability, unaccountability, and growing unfairness and inequality.

Not simply admiring the problem, Wu advocates for several straightforward interventions to make our economic lives fairer. Regulate the tech platforms that favour their own products and marketplaces and discriminate against customers with nontransparent pricing, all while paying a pittance in tax. Wu also advocates for public options, both as competitors and to create balance in markets, a role all but ignored by policymakers to date. Wu presents Canada, and all other countries wrangling with Big Tech, with a stark choice: take bold action or settle in for the Age of Extraction.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Blankertz, Rock and Shaxson, Google’s hidden empire New data reveals the company’s unexpected reach and the failure of antitrust authorities wielding Chicago-School economics to address vertical power (ArXiv)
• Parry, Yes, Brussels really wants Google to be broken up (Politico)
• ​There Are No Good Buyers in a Potential Netflix-Warner Bros.-Paramount Deal (American Economic Liberties Project)

U.K. Zooms in on Getty-Shutterstock Stock Photo Merger

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the U.K.’s competition cop, has rejected the first set of proposals from Getty and Shutterstock to resolve competition issues posed by the $3.7 billion USD stock photo empire merger. Instead of accepting their opening offer, the CMA has elected to do a deeper dive after preliminary research found the potential for a substantial loss of competition, harming the businesses, creative professionals and associations that benefit from a competitive stock photo market.

For photographers, selling their work to stock photography companies is a way to make a living in an increasingly cutthroat market. Less competition for stock photography would see photographers squeezed at the same time as the businesses that use stock photography see prices increase. Getty is also a key provider of “editorial content,” licensing photos of real-life events to already struggling news organizations. As the use of AI images increases, lower pay and higher costs for real-life images could accelerate the shift towards an increasingly deepfake understanding of the world around us.

Getty and Shutterstock each maintain their position because of the networks of photographers and clients established over years, creating a high barrier for potential competitors in both the stock and editorial markets. Getty-Shutterstock could also raise costs for companies looking to build AI models on their vast trove of images. Critics may ask who cares about the market for photos of fake coworkers fake collaborating, but Getty-Shutterstock is an example of the range of costs we pay when we take markets for granted.

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

Follow CAMP on Twitter LinkedIn Instagram or Facebook​

​