Do Not Pass Go by Peter Nowak

Want to cancel your phone or internet service? Better carve out a serious chunk of time for calling in to plead and argue with a customer agent.The irony is that same service might have taken only seconds to sign up for online in the first place. And it’s not just telecom, it’s widespread. Satellite radio, gym memberships, newspaper subscriptions – there are no shortages of businesses in Canada that purposely make it delightfully easy for customers to come on board, but dreadfully difficult to leave.As usual, Canada is lagging while other countries are moving to protect consumers from such predatory tactics. Fortunately, there’s a bright spot on the horizon, as the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission recently announced new regulations that will force telecom providers to make it easy for customers to change or cancel their services online without having to call in to speak with an agent.These so-called “click-to-cancel” rules are the first federal effort to address the scourge of consumer lock-in, but they aren’t coming into effect until April 2027 and they only apply to telecom companies.Tahira Dawood, acting director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre consumer rights group, joins the Do Not Pass Go podcast to discuss why Canada is so behind and why click-to-cancel rules are broadly needed throughout the economy.Check out the Competition Bureau’s recent paper on dark patterns here.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

One question we often ask in these parts is what can the average person do about monopolies and oligopolies? The answers vary depending on the situation, ranging from boycotts of products and services to shareholder activism and even political action.But with so many Canadians struggling just to make ends meet – when many are working multiple jobs and have precious little time or energy to devote to anything other than the basic necessities of life – the better question might be: Who can do something about monopolies and oligopolies? It’s known as “demographic availability,” or the privilege of protest – where only a certain well-resourced group of people are able to take action, whatever form it takes.It’s an ironic situation because it means that those who are most affected by economic concentration are often the least able to resist it directly, which gives rise to the question: Does that put more of the onus to do so on those with more resources and discretionary time?Stephen Gasteyer is an associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University who has written about activism and demographic availability. He joins the Do Not Pass Go podcast to discuss the privilege of protest, the different forms of economic resistance and whether society’s more resourced members have a heightened responsibility to engage in it.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

Payouts in the class-action lawsuit against Loblaw for its role in the Great Canadian Bread Price-Fixing Scandal are now going out, which is great news… but also not.The $49.11 deposits, being paid out to those who registered for the lawsuit, are a drop in the bucket compared to what the scandal has cumulatively cost Canadian households – and a reminder of the big competitive problems plaguing the industry. For 15 years, Loblaw and its fellow large grocers – including Metro, Sobeys, Walmart and Giant Tiger – conspired to raise the price of bread. While Loblaw is finally paying something for its role in the cartel, the public is in the dark as to what – if anything – is happening with the other participants.Worse still, what little is known about the scandal suggests that price-fixing on other products may be happening and the chains themselves haven’t changed their behaviour, if the string of continuing controversies is anything to go by.Keldon Bester, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, says strong action is needed by all levels of government to shed more light on the various ways in which the nation’s large grocers are colluding and preventing competition in the sector.He joins Do Not Pass Go this week to discuss why the current payouts are good news for consumers, but also to explain why Canada’s approach to fixing the industry’s structural problems isn’t even half-baked.Check out the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project here.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

Industry concentration, supply problems and the war in Iran are all contributing to ever-escalating grocery prices for Canadians, but there’s also a serious anti-competitive issue behind them: restrictive real-estate covenants.These secretive real-estate deals, signed by Loblaws, Sobeys and others when they open stores, are keeping competitors away and funnelling consumers toward existing stores. They’re prevalent across Canada and, in some cases, their terms are egregious – would you believe that Loblaw’s typically blocks billiard halls from malls?Once used to prevent specific minorities from living in certain areas, grocery chains have discovered and deployed these restrictive covenants to great effect, which why is the Competition Bureau is now investigating them and Manitoba has banned them. Jacob Filipp, a marketing professional in Toronto, began unearthing and tracking these contracts after discovering how they drive up grocery prices. He maintains a definitive and growing database on his website as something of a hobby and a public service.He joins Do Not Pass Go this week to explain restrictive covenants and how grocery chains are using them to drive up prices for Canadians.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

Most musicians in North America are afraid to say anything negative about Live Nation/Ticketmaster for fear of retaliation, but not Rollie Pemberton. The Edmonton-born rapper, better known as Cadence Weapon, doesn’t just speak out – he takes action.In 2022, Pemberton started My Merch, a movement against the entertainment giant demanding a cut of artists’ merchandise sales in venues it owned. That effort led to more than a hundred venues signing on and a wave of public awareness around the issue.Now, on his just released new album Forager, the former Edmonton poet laureate uses his love of vintage clothing and thrifting as a bridge to connect with his immediate surroundings and to return to a less ephemeral existence that isn’t so controlled by big corporations.He goes further in his upcoming book, Ways of Listening, in which he explores how to really connect with music – without relying on algorithms.He joins Do Not Pass Go this week to talk about the ongoing Live Nation monopoly cases in both the U.S. and Canada, the future of Spotify and streaming, and how the fakeness of artificial intelligence is going to make people treasure real music again.Check out Forager here. His upcoming book, Ways of Listening, is out May 26 and can be found here. And of course, check out his regular musings on Substack.We also mention The Artist Economy, a Substack by Joel Gouveia, which can be found here.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

Airlines, banks, telcos, grocery chains. The economy is three companies in a trench coat. Welcome to The Antidote. Do Not Pass Go, your very own survival guide to our monopolized times. Join me, Peter Nowak, every week as we delve into competition issues, oligopolies, their influence over our lawmakers, affordability, and what it means for you.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

This week we’re celebrating a pair of milestones here at Do Not Pass Go: We’ve officially hit both the six-month and the 1,000-subscriber marks! Our quick growth tells us there’s a big appetite for what we’re doing here, which is reporting on and elevating the profile of competition, affordability and consumer issues in Canada. That’s great news, because we’re just getting started – there’s so much more to come.Join us on this very special episode of the podcast for a look back at some of the highlights and stats from the past six months, plus a look forward at what’s next.Plus, in between, we’re joined by Vass Bednar, director of the Canadian SHIELD Institute sovereignty think tank, and Arshy Mann, host of The Hatchet podcast and Substack, for a report card on how the “hawkish” Carney government is doing so far on competition issues.Along with Denise Hearn, Vass is the co-author of the 2024 book The Big Fix, while Arshy in 2022/2023 produced Canadaland’s monopoly podcast series, both of which were the inspiration for Do Not Pass Go. What better way to celebrate our milestones than a conversation with grandma and grandpa!Check out the Canadian SHIELD Institute here and The Hatchet here.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

Of all the places you’d think that Canada would have drawn inspiration from when deciding how to adjudicate its competition problems, Sweden maybe isn’t top of mind.But that’s exactly what lawmakers did back in the 1980s, when they borrowed from the Scandinavian country’s Market Court to create the Competition Tribunal – Canada’s court of first resort when it comes to assessing mergers and abuse of dominance cases.As the name implies, it’s not precisely a court. The Tribunal is indeed made of up judges, but they are often joined by lay members that jointly hear cases as a panel. As per the Swedish approach, the idea has always been to couple real-world economic and market knowledge with legal expertise. Prior to retiring this past October, Paul Crampton served on the federal court for 16 years, with 14 of those as its Chief Justice. His duties included heading the Competition Tribunal, where he presided over some of the biggest and most contentious cases in Canadian history – including perhaps the biggest and most contentious, the Rogers-Shaw merger in 2023.He joins the Do Not Pass Go podcast this week to discuss how recent, badly needed updates to Canada’s competition laws are likely to affect future Tribunal cases – and, of course, we talk about that Rogers-Shaw case. Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

If there’s one highly concentrated industry that the federal government refuses to fix (perhaps more so than others), it’s airlines. It’s why Canadians pay some of the highest prices to fly and suffer under some of the weakest passenger protections in the world.The government has ignored a major report issued by the Competition Bureau last year that has recommendations on how to improve the problems. The passenger complaint backlog sits at close to 100,000, with each individual issue taking years to resolve. Worse still, according to a CBC Go Public investigation published in January, the feds are actively delaying making airlines pay for the complaints system.With such inaction and even complicity by officials, other resistance emerges. Enter Gabor Lukacs.For nearly 20 years, this one name has been striking fear into airlines by becoming synonymous with air passenger rights – in fact, Air Passenger Rights is his group, which has more than 274,000 members on Facebook.Lukacs has fought – and won – dozens of court battles with the airlines, getting passengers justice and the money they’re owed in the process. He’s a fixture in virtually every news report on airline misdeeds, which is to say he’s on TV a lot. He’s the nation’s veritable avatar of passenger anger.But who is Gabor Lukacs? Why has he taken up this crusade? What drives him?A child math prodigy, Lukacs escaped an abusive mother in Hungary when he was just eight years old and ended up doing a PhD in Canada at just 16. He joins Do Not Pass Go this week to share his amazing story and how it – and his love of math – fuels his crusade for the justice that the government refuses to deliver.For more, check out airpassengerrights.ca.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

Surveillance pricing is getting a lot of attention, and rightfully so – the individualized prices seen online for years, based on what companies such as Amazon and airlines know about their customers, are rapidly making their way into the real world.Also known as dynamic pricing, it’s a problem because it means retailers are increasingly going to be able to charge people differently based on what they know about the person and their ability to pay, rather than on traditional supply-and-demand economics and competitive factors.The driver of it all is poor privacy protection. Canada, with its lax laws, is especially vulnerable, according to Jim Balsillie, who needs little introduction.Balsillie was the co-chief executive of Research In Motion, otherwise known as BlackBerry – the tiny startup from Waterloo, Ont. that ignited the smartphone revolution in the early-2000s and became the most valuable company in Canada for a time.Apple and Google ultimately ate up the smartphone market, but Balsillie has continued to be a prominent voice in Canadian business and policy. He has started several think tanks and advocacy groups, including the Canadian Council of Innovators and the Canadian SHIELD Institute. And he continues to argue for stronger laws and policies that protection Canadian businesses and consumers.In a new Globe and Mail opinion piece, he takes aim at surveillance pricing and privacy and how it is contributing to Canada’s cost-of-living crisis.He joins Do Not Pass Go this week to lay down the gauntlet on Canada’s political parties – he wants them to declare whether they’re really on the public’s side when it comes to privacy and affordability or whether they’re all about their own self-interests.Check out his Globe and Mail opinion piece here.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

Baseball spring training is here! Hurray! Whether or not you’re a fan, it’s a symbolic reminder that the end of winter is just around the corner. It’s a time of celebration akin to the best pagan renewal rituals.But we’re not here to talk about the pending arrival of spring and sunnier days ahead. We’re here to discuss the problem in Toronto sports in general, and Canadian sports overall. And that is the monopoly that one company – Rogers Communications – has over all of it.After buying out its “rival” Bell’s share of Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment last year, Rogers now owns 75 per cent of the company and therefore full control of its properties, which include the Maple Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC, the Argos and several other teams.Along with the Blue Jays, which Rogers bought in 2000, the company also owns the Rogers Centre (it’s still Skydome in these parts), the Scotiabank Arena, television broadcast rights and much of the media that covers the teams.Strangely, no one is doing anything about it. The Competition Bureau gave the MLSE transaction a pass in late 2024 and didn’t even say why.David Shoalts is an award-winning veteran of Canadian sports journalism. He spent decades covering sports for The Globe and Mail and, in 2018, published the latest of his three books: Hockey Fight in Canada, about how the CBC lost its NHL broadcast rights to Rogers.He joins Do Not Pass Go to discuss how Rogers’ sports monopoly is bad news for fans – not just when it comes to the prices they pay for tickets, snacks and beer, but also in how the teams are covered in the media and how that can affect their chances of winning.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

Back in October, former Conservative party leader and Prime Minister candidate Erin O’Toole argued that monopolies and oligopolies aren’t necessarily all bad at a University of Toronto debate on the subject.They were instrumental in building Canada in the first place, and keeping the country free from domination by the United States in its formative years.As the saying goes, everything old is new again, and Canada once again finds itself between a veritable rock and a hard place – an aggressive and increasingly unfriendly neighbour and a need to rein in corporate concentration and the affordability crisis it’s contributing to.O’Toole knows a thing or two about consumer issues and national security. Prior to politics, he worked as a competition lawyer for Procter & Gamble and served in the military for 12 years, where he earned the Canadian Forces Decoration distinction.After the Conservatives lost the 2021 election, he returned to the private sector, where he is currently the president and managing director of risk advisory firm ADIT North America.He joins Do Not Pass Go to discuss Canada’s difficult geopolitical situation and its equally difficult effort to bring oligopolies to heel, plus he sings a few bars of Gordon Lightfoot.Check out his Blue Skies Substack here.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

There’s a battle going on over Canada’s crown jewels: Banff and Jasper.With more than 6 million annual visitors between them, the two national parks are the nation’s biggest tourist attraction – not to mention the symbolic image of natural beauty that many people around the world picture when they think of Canada.But a single company has rolled up nearly all of the market for paid attractions, including gondolas and boat rides, plus a third of the hotels in Banff. And worse yet, critics say, it’s an American company: Denver-based Pursuit Attractions and Hospitality.The Competition Bureau investigated the company’s roll-up last year but chose not to take action because of jurisdiction issues with Parks Canada, the federal agency responsible for national parks. That prompted the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project watchdog to call on the government to intervene by breaking up Pursuit and requiring Parks Canada to consider competition issues in national parks going forward.Perhaps the biggest supporter of that stance is Adam Waterous, an oil tycoon from Toronto who also owns the Mount Norquay ski resort in Banff and the local train station.Waterous joins Do Not Pass Go this week to discuss how Pursuit’s monopoly is raising attraction prices and contributing to congestion in the parks. Stuart Back, Pursuit’s chief operating officer for Banff and Jasper, also joins us to refute the charges.The Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project brief on Pursuit’s holdings in Banff and Jasper can be found here.(Photo courtesy of Flickr user rvdbrugge, CC BY-NC 2.0)Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe