[UNFINISHED] - Oligopolies Have Run Canada To The Ground
Canada is one of the greatest countries in the world. Our country is home to unparalleled natural beauty, immense natural wealth, an extremely stable and democratic political climate, and an incredibly diverse, highly educated population that continues to rank as some of the wealthiest on the globe. It’s no wonder why Canada’s always been considered one of the best countries to live in the world, right up there with Switzerland and Norway, countries many times smaller than our own.
It is in spite of this and in spite of Canada's incredible potential that our economy is so seriously flawed. As of Q1 2024, our GDP per capita has is below what it was merely a decade ago and we've gone from one of the wealthiest countries in the world to 25th. Let that sink in, 25th. On a per-capita basis, we are now lower than France, Germany, Sweden, Taiwan, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong. By this metric, we are no longer among the world's wealthiest, most prosperous countries. As painful as it is, Canada is starting to become a country on the decline.
There are countless scapegoats for our economic misfortune: Trudeau, the pandemic, mass-immigration, bureaucracy, you name it. But while every theory has some merit, one stands out in its continuity, impact, and unostentatiousness: our oligopolies. Yes, the same oligopolies we bank with, buy groceries from, and fill our gas-guzzling, toddler-crushing pickups with contribute to Canada's declining labor productivity, lack of domestic innovation, increasing cost-of-living, culminating in a shrinking economy which serves the interests of it’s executives and shareholders over it’s stakeholders.
While Canadian monopolies can be traced back to 1670, modern Canadian monopolies tend to be residuals of the neoliberal policy blunders of Brian Mulroney and, to a lesser extent, Jean Chrétien. Under Mulroney's governance, Canada's parliament passed the Competition Act, replacing the then 97-year-old Combines Investigation Act. Unfortunately, however, the Competition Act let companies engage in anti-competitive behavior if the projected efficiencies of such a move outweighed its inefficiencies. From a modern perspective, this loophole rendered the act ineffective, but lawmakers hoped that this leniency would give Canadian firms greater market power to compete with much wealthier, more aggressive American firms who tended to view Canada as a branch-plant economy of the US. On top of this, Mulroney privatized some of Canada's largest crown-corporations who had accumulated large shares of their respective markets, effectively creating new monopolies and oligopolies. Some examples include Petro-Canada, Air Canada, Canadair, and Canada National. While this measures did help improve the Canadian economy, reducing government deficits and massively diversifying Canada's equity markets, they also laid the framework for a broken, uncompetitive economy run by oligarchs in much the same way Russia was after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Today, Canadian oligopolies are everywhere, despite the illusion of choice and the vast majority of Canadians rely on oligopolies/monopolies just to survive.
For example:
Canada’s six largest banks control 93% of all banking assets.
Canada’s freight rail heavyweights CN and CPCK move 95% of all freight rail by tonne-kilometres
Canada’s five largest supermarkets/grocers, including two American firms, control 79.3% of the supermarket industry
Canada’s three largest telecom providers control 88.7% of the market
Air Canada and WestJet command 85% of the air travel industry
This fails to even consider our many industries which remain wholly monopolized by federal and provincial crown-corporations, such as energy production, passenger rail, health insurance, postal services, and liquor sales, as well as markets controlled by multinational corporations like Google, Amazon, or even AB InBev and Coors.
Proponents of oligopolies and monopolies and relaxed antitrust regulations may invoke Canada's relative economic stability as proof that our current economic system is superior or point out how our low population warrants low competition in certain industries, but our collective acceptance of oligopolies and monopolies has several unintended side effects that serve to hurt Canadian consumers and enrich shareholders in these industries.
