Canada’s Watchdog Hopes To Update Competition Rules

Canada’s Competition Bureau is trying to find its place in a world where other jurisdictions are using antitrust measures to combat the increasing market power of Big Tech companies, reported The Globe & Mail.

The federal government and the bureau itself both said last week that they hope to bring Canada’s competition rules in line with the realities of a digitally driven economy. Meanwhile, some of Canada’s most vocal advocates of competition policy reform released a 31,000-word study that argues the Competition Act isn’t equipped to deal with how market dominance is achieved today.

All of this aligns with the increasingly aggressive antitrust measures levelled in the United States and Europe against companies such as Facebook owner Meta Platforms, Google operator Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

Regulators and politicians there have argued that the consumer data collected by these companies and their enormous market capitalizations give them power to strong-arm not just markets and individual competitors, but consumers themselves.

Everyday citizens, policy makers argue, often have little choice but to use the world’s top platforms to connect with people, information and commerce, trading away data about their digital travels and reinforcing platform dominance along the way.

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