🥞 anti-competitive

welcome to the land of alright

mexie co @baby2o00

I hope this email doesn't find you. I hope you've escaped, that you're free.

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Economist Robin Shaban and I have another piece in the Globe and Mail that I wanted to share. 👇

Report on Business @globebusiness

Canada’s Competition Act needs an overhaul

dlvr.itOpinion: Canada’s Competition Act needs an overhaulCanada’s competition law, which is designed to protect Canadians from monopoly, is woefully ill-suited to the task. It needs to be overhauled

Readers have already directed us to look into consolidation/competition in the hearing aid industry, razor blades, eyeglasses, and postage machines. Keep ‘em coming!

It’s no surprise that we think Canadas competition legislation could benefit from a refresh. We also need more research in the space. We’ve made policy decisions in the pandemic that have privileged larger firms, and haven’t yet been able to fully quantify the implications for independent businesses and entrepreneurship.

sha not nice @essneice

And why can I buy “non-essentials” from Shoppers Drug Mart and not Walmart???

After Robin and I attended the Competition Bureau’s Summit a few weeks back. Instead of discussing competition in a digital age or looking at anti-trust innovation and experimentation in other jurisdictions, the discussion veered into “regulation = red tape and red tape is BAD” territory. It was boring, and made me feel like I was on a different policy planet. A keynote from legendary Senator Amy Klobuchar was pre-recorded, so we didn’t have to deal with her asking us: What is up with your approach, Canada?

Competition Bureau Canada @CompBureau

(2/3) Today’s keynote speaker, Amy Klobuchar, had this to say: “Competition policy is economic policy. To me, reforming antitrust law is about rejuvenating capitalism and building a post-pandemic economy that works for all.”

The OECD estimates that absent excessive market power, the incomes of the poorest 20% of Canadians could be 20% greater and the wealth held by the top one percent could be 24% lower.

Bryan Carney @bpcarney

NEW: on Competition Bureau bread price-fixing probe Court files suggest: -Bureau surveilled & raided Maple Leaf Foods HQ -MLF CEO discussed coordination on price for meat -Save-On-Foods,London Drugs owners signed onto group price increase me @TheTyee 1/x

thetyee.caGrocery Giants Discussed Fixing More Than Bread Prices, Court Files Suggest | The TyeeDocuments reveal feds raided Maple Leaf Foods and raise questions about co-ordinated meat pricing and involvement of BC chains in bread price setting.

Margaret O'Mara @margaretomara

Similar consolidation happened in Great Depression, which helped build political momentum for organized labor as well as more vigorous antitrust enforcement

Dan Price @DanPriceSeattle

Amazon: profit up 100% Walmart: profit up 80% Target: profit up 80% Lowe's: profit up 74% Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google: stock at record high Small businesses: 21% closed; revenue for rest down 30% We're seeing a monumental wealth transfer from mom & pops to conglomerates.

American Economic Liberties Project @econliberties

💥 BIG NEWS 💥 Today is the launch of Access to Markets — a new initiative to build and support a community of entrepreneurs, businesses, and investors to fight for fair, competitive markets. accesstomarkets.org

FWIW, there have been a few promising steps taken by our own Competition Bureau to evolve the nation’s approach in the space: for one, Canada is funding the “OECD Gender Inclusive Competition Policy project,” examining how a gender lens could help deliver more effective competition policy. Last summer, the Bureau also launched a market study into Canada’s health care sector, centering on Canadians’ access to virtual health care products and services. These are worthwhile initiatives that are tangential to the urgent need to modernize the Competition Act.

Robin and I have also been a little bullied by Bay Street for our scholarship and advocacy - which is uncool yet gloriously motivating. Indeed, when long-time actors in the competition policy space coordinate to extinguish and discount the voices of new entrants they display the very same behaviour of monopolist ruffians that are intolerant of upstart competitors and reveal themselves to be intellectually anti-competitive.

Sandeep Vaheesan @sandeepvaheesan

Critics of antimonopoly rely on caricatures like "big is bad policy is back," but the actual debate is over how businesses can grow. An economy in which firms grow through M&A is very different than one in which they grow through hiring, investment, and invention.

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ICYMI: A couple of weeks ago, I had a great conversation with Matt Stoller and Ali Haberstroh about competition policy trends and independent businesses.

Vass Bednar @VassB

ICYMI, you can catch up through the video 📺. Find out what makes Ali so powerful 💪, if Canada is the land of moose, maple syrup + monopoly 🇨🇦, and what happens when Little House on the Prairie meets Jurassic Park: crowdcast.io/e/tplstollerha…

crowdcast.ioBig Tech, Monopolies and Imagining Alternatives - CrowdcastVass Bednar speaks with Matt Stoller and Ali Haberstroh about the implications of monopoly power on democracy and new business models for digital platforms.

*You can watch/listen to the interview here. 📺

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Vass Bednar is the Executive Director of McMaster University’s new Master of Public Policy in Digital Society Program.