Cell phones, airlines, grocery stores: Canada’s Monopoly Problem.
How did we get here. How do we get out. pic.twitter.com/L1T9xwY5IS
— Ryan Williams (@Ryan_r_Williams) December 26, 2024
Good work by Conservative MP Ryan Williams, though he carefully avoids the dairy and egg cartels.
We can’t get out of it. Almost our entire economy is based on either government approved monopolies or government subsidies. From telecommunications to banking to agriculture to media and a host of others, the governments tendrils are so entwined into the economy that it wouldn’t be able to function without it.
Canada is about 10 years ahead of where the Democrats were trying to take America.
After watching that video I am more convinced that the only hope Canada has at this point, is to join with the USA and become one or more states.
Canada is no longer a free country, nor is it a capitalist country … if it ever was.
It is a gulag and getting worse by the day …
The opportunist, Mark Carney, will be worse than Trudeau if he indeed wins the election.
Wait and see ….
I do not believe that Pierre P will have enough power to make serious changes if he wins the PM job.
We are basically srewed, thanks to the continual corruption of the Liberal Party of Canada and all the far left assholes who vote for them over and over whilst expecting different results .. or not.
@JW: And problem is we can’t do anything about it. When you rely 80-90% re economy, trade, defense on US, retaliate is NOT an option. I know, it’s nice + feels good to pound chest and scream how proud-Canadian we are, but when Cdn$ will tank and everyone will be piss-poor, what r we gonna do?
“@JW: And problem is we can’t do anything about it. When you rely 80-90% re economy, trade, defense on US, retaliate is NOT an option.”
Exactly.
” I know, it’s nice + feels good to pound chest and scream how proud-Canadian we are, but when Cdn$ will tank and everyone will be piss-poor, what r we gonna do?”
Again, exactly. The adults need to take charge here, and not allow the politicians to destroy our entire economy just to get themselves elected (or re-elected).
“Cutting off your nose to spite your face” my grandmother would have said. Idiocy.
” I know, it’s nice + feels good to pound chest and scream how proud-Canadian we are, but when Cdn$ will tank and everyone will be piss-poor, what r we gonna do?”
Wait. Is this the same “proud Canadian” that just yesterday solemnly performed the self-abasement of “land acknowledgement” before public events; that mournfully acknowledged all of the dead “anomalies”; is willing to spend a few minutes every three/four/five years carefully and thoughtfully choosing the same collection of liars and cheats and frauds and…
“Wait. Is this the same “proud Canadian” that just yesterday solemnly performed the self-abasement of “land acknowledgement” before public events; that mournfully acknowledged all of the dead “anomalies”; is willing to spend a few minutes every three/four/five years carefully and thoughtfully choosing the same collection of liars and cheats and frauds and…”
Yeah, that’s him…
Liberal, Tory, same old story.
“…but when Cdn$ will tank and everyone will be piss-poor, what r we gonna do?”
Like most Canadians, blame Trump.
If he wins a majority, he will have virtually unlimited power, the question is does he have the balls to use it? A majority PM in the Westminster system is much more powerful than the president of a republic, as the PM controls 2 of the 3 branches. He has to go full Milie, or at least a double DOGE, and get rid of boards, agencies, commissions, and defund NGO’s by the boatload. Then repeal all the environmental roadblocks to development, particularly with respect to resources, and see what can be done about changing the judiciary.
If he has the balls.
He will need more than balls. He will need the Courts and the Senate, long since sold to the Liberals (ultimately by the voters of this Country). Which way will the Courts and the Senate go when pressured by politics and economics?
The courts will f him over, no question. Like they did with pipelines under Harper.
One of Harper’s biggest mistakes was to not stack the senate and the judges, when he left.
If he was truly a conservative and had that hope for the country, going forward, he would have. Cannot forgive him for (not) doing that.
We will forever be remembered as a huge country, populated by little people.
As we’ve learned, Harper is a Globalist. He confirmed it this week. His inactions while in government were subtle clues he was a Globalist.
This week, he dropped the mask.
When asked how to stop Trump/annexation, his response was “AT ANY COST”.
Not Negotiate, not Discuss, not Diplomacy.
Globalist Shill. Traitor. Turncoat. Uniparty PM
A prime minister under our system has the power the Liberal Party chooses to give him. We have a one-party state whose authority is absolute and unconstrained by law.
If the Conservatives take control of Parliament, PP gets to preside over playschool while the Liberal judiciary makes the decisions and imposes the policy. They wouldn’t even let Harper appoint judges. Pierre will be lucky if they grant him his choice of breakfast.
Carney just admitted he’s an elitist and globalist, and he thinks “that’s what Canada needs.”
https://www.junonews.com/p/mark-carney-im-an-elitist-and-a-globalist?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=7bqdt&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I’m old enough to remember when the feds wanted to investigate “price gouging” by gas stations.
The fox investigating mysterious disappearances in the henhouse.
With the government responsible for the gouging I often wondered just how they would try and step around the massive taxes on gas. Canada has become an unfunny joke.
“I’m old enough to remember when the feds wanted to investigate “price gouging” by gas stations.”
Me too, at least twice. And both times, the price of gas suddenly dropped and the ‘inquiries’ magically disappeared. How convenient.
I’ve compared pump prices to wholesale/trading floor prices. There’s not much markup room.
Its SOP for gas stations to do “price runs”, to check what their nearby competitors are charging, and adjust their own prices accordingly.
My point is that there’s a shitload of taxes on gas, all imposed by various levels of gov’t.
I also know they will call each other and advise what they are doing. In the 1990s my dad was in the office of the service station c-store when the town’s other service station called to advise of raising the prices.
Maybe I should have included there is about 1 to 10 cents per litre over the wholesale/trading price for gasoline at the pumps and I took taxes into consideration. All the bills have to be paid within that margin.
There’s a gas bar at Walsh Ab, the owner offers best price, buys “off the rack”, non-branded fuel. You pay in cash for lowest price.
His competitors hate him.
Why does he have lowest price? Because he wants to, and give people a choice.
So he does avoid the farmer cartels, but I’m okay with that.
(Best to keep battles limited and or separate and we know that one’s got a lot of mine fields.)
Many Canadians don’t even understand competition, they’ll never see this video, and if they did see it, they’d dismiss it as somehow anti-Canadian or far-right.
Capitalism is a dirty and scary word to Canadians.
“So he does avoid the farmer cartels, but I’m okay with that.”
I’m not.
“(Best to keep battles limited and or separate and we know that one’s got a lot of mine fields.)”
They have gotten away with this price-fixing for far too long, and it needs to stop. Anyone who crosses the US border regularly and sees the price of milk, eggs and cheese down their vs what Canadians are paying knows what I am talking about. It’s obscene. It hurts the poor.
One of the stated reasons for the high price of eggs and poultry in the USA is due to the current Bird Flu pandemic that’s sweeping the nation. Too bad we couldn’t help them out with that.
As for the high cellphone prices, they are coming down, I remember a time before there was any competition from Wind Mobile, Virgin, and others, yes I know there’s only a few companies that own the infrastructure and sell the bandwidth. If one shops around, like on Black Friday and other sales events, one can get a decent price, I recently re-negotiated my contract with Fido (Rogers lite) I went from 30Gig/$39 a month to 110 Gig for $42 a month and also got 1000 minutes of USA and international calling. That plan a few years ago was $200+ a month..
The MP doesn’t understand competition either. Competition is important but it’s not an end in and of itself and if you ‘force’ it’s not real and doesn’t work. It’s been tried before and failed: https://financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-mysteries-blowing-in-the-wind-deal
Canadians’ high cell phone bills have a lot to do with the dead weight cost of spectrum sales that were made worse by Harper’s attempts to engender ‘competition’ that wasn’t.
Heard in passing at a Costco register line-up: “Yeah, I am only going to buy Canadian. Show those yanks that they can’t mess with us!”
Did they have lemons, olive oil, lettuce, berries, etc in their cart? What about clothing or consumer goods made in China?
If you did buy Canadian you might have some meat, eggs, and milk in your cart. That’s about it.
People are so stunned.
Very few people ever read the label to see the “Product of………..” words on a can or jar or even meat products. It is always quite interesting how little we now produce in our own country. Canned smoked oysters from China, pickles from India, dry prepared packages of things like hamburger helper, Knorr ready to cook various noodle products all from the U S. Many things are labeled imported by such and such a “Canadian” company.
Our country was sold out from beneath us long ago.
We’re the national equivalent of a shell corporation.
I believe you hit the nail square on the head.
There is literally nothing with that.
Says the highly arrogant but extremely unintelligent twit.
A shell corporation? We manufacture ammunition? We harvest clams?
Once home, they’ll order from Amazon and watch Netflix on their Apple PC.
No self-realization at all.
Their support for the Psy-Op is a mile wide and an inch deep.
Stupid is as Stupid does, Virtue Signalling.
Does “Space X” fall into the “monopoly” definition?
I don’t think so. It’s just another delivery mechanism.
I disagreed with that too, there are other internet providers.
“Does “Space X” fall into the “monopoly” definition?
I don’t think so. It’s just another delivery mechanism.”
And has competition.
Canada has a stupidity crisis.
Maybe even a monopoly on stupidity.
Last month the sheep were boycotting Loblaws because of high grocery prices, now they are vowing to pick up their non-existent firearms to defend……higher grocery prices caused by the egg and dairy cartels and tariffs on US egg an dairy products.
Why do Liberal and NDP politicians say so much stupid shit?
Because that stupid shit works on their supporters.
“Why do Liberal and NDP politicians say so much stupid shit?
Because that stupid shit works on their supporters.”
That’s it, in a nutshell….although some ‘Conservatives’ are not immune, either.
Here are just a few thoughts. I’m in Florida now (and have been for many winters) and the grocery business is more concentrated than in Canada. Publix owns this place with some competition from Walmart/Costco. Winn Dixie seems to be fading away with the closure of their one big store in Melbourne and I don’t many others around. While there may be many large grocery stores in the U.S. each seems to have a close to monopoly situation in their respective markets (e.g. Vons in southern California or Fry’s in Arizona).
There is also the economy of scale argument. Given the U.S. is about 9 times the size of Canada, how do Canadian companies get economies of scale while maintaining a competitive market – that is the tough question. The U.S. may have a half dozen or more major carriers. Scale that down to Canada’s population and you get may one major airline. If anyone has the answer I would like to see it.
I agree with Williams about the government vetting mergers more closely. Then again you have Sobey’s acquiring a majority stake in Longo’s in Ontario. There goes another independent – but what about the Longo family that wants to cash out? Can the government prevent that? The same goes for Ace Bakery (bought by Westons) or Kicking Horse Coffee acquired by the Italian company Lavazza. That deal was worth over $200 million to the Canadian entrepreneurs who started the company (Elana Rosenfeld and Leo Johnson).
BTW – Ryan Williams is my MP. That and I just dumped Virgin Mobile for Freedom Mobile – $40 per month including unlimited calling and roaming in Canada, U.S. and Mexico and more data than I could ever use.
But why use the US? Why not Australia?
The Canadian government throttles competition through regulation and favoritism and Canadians pay more.
The government does it on purpose.
Its not just the lack of choice, but serious declines in startups and investment even while the population has risen dramatically.
The only thing doing a booming business in Canada because the federal government isn’t intervening is drug production and distribution.
“The U.S. may have a half dozen or more major carriers. Scale that down to Canada’s population and you get may one major airline. If anyone has the answer I would like to see it. ”
End cabotage and restrictions on foreign investment and new entrants. America has foreign investment laws on airlines more restrictive than Canada’s. No,’my’ airline doesn’t have to be owned by my countrymen. Some Saudi-Chinese board is perfectly fine.
“what about the Longo family that wants to cash out? Can the government prevent that? ”
Not in a just country. A just society.
“Ryan Williams is my MP”
My condolences.
We had more airline choice in 1985 when the population of Saskatchewan was 4/5 what it is now. I know, because I shipped dogs in and out of Texas, California, Pennsylvania without any trouble at all. Impossible today.
We did not even have WestJet back then. You had a share of domestic routes cordoned for TCA (now Air Canada) and various other strangling regulations that propped up weak crummy airlines and suppressed investment. The resulting ‘competition’ was meaningless. A perfect example of what I’m getting at in this thread.
PWA, Time Air, CP, Ward, etc. just to name a few. All gone now. Taxpayers subsidising Air Canada, a full crown corporation at the time, made it very hard for private sector airlines. AC still has the Crown Corporation mentality despite being privatized.
AC is always at least 25% more expensive than WJ, ranging to 50% more.
When the dollar was good 15 years ago, we were flying out of Seattle, even with ferry fares, hotel and meals, it was cheaper than YVR.
Not today.
The cost of flying today is ridiculous on any Canadastan carrier, no thanks to AC, the worst flying experience in North America.
Carney’s and Trudeau’s plan appears to be: Trump is hurting our industries, so we must punish Canadians with more taxation.
Obviously our “industries” cannot exist without customers as there are too few of us and the U S is our biggest customer. We could survive without imported foods but we have allowed even our own food production to slide because of the large number of countries that grow things we don’t or can’t grow.
I would like the few people who might read this today to understand that everyday of our lives we rely on 100s if not thousands of people in the various supply chains, sewer, water, roads, the products needed to keep everything working, and food in the stores, and a roof over your head, and heat and light. Just take a few things and sit down and list what you believe to be the way the product gets to you as a consumer. Give it a try. Think from start to finish, things do not magically just appear.
vowg
Apply that to your STUPID religious bullschiff, and you will nail the kanadian problemo right on the head. And it’s that emotional belief that is the problem as to why nonsense replaces logic.
NME666
WTF are you talking about. Showing how stupid you are with a comment is not a good thing for you. You failed to see the logic in what I said. Wow.
Exactly, the sheeple are too stupid to realize that easy conclusion.
Things will improve dramatically when the carbon tax increases, and when Carney invokes the emergency act to shut down all essential production in order to wage war against the US.
I suspect Trump will force the trade talks (tariffs) sometime before spring. My guess is he will target banks, tele-coms, airlines, the auto industry, supply management and ? in an attempt to open up the market for US companies. It can’t happen a minute too soon imo.
I’m not quite as self loathing as some about the future of the country. We have resources we don’t even know about and with a change of direction can turn things around. The world is clamouring for our resources. It won’t turn on a dime, but it can be done. Think of a certain South American country…
Go for it.
I see you still don’t understand what Trump is about.
Speak to me oh wise one…
He thinks trade is bad. He actually believes imports are some kind of loss. He’s an idiot and he’s being informed by advisors who think there’s something magically good about domestic manufacturing.
Does that include armaments?
There is: Jobs.
Hi!!!! Remember me?
That started strong and then became an absolute train wreck that only reinforces just how lost and confused conservatives are and how they don’t care how lost and confused they are.
If you are against mergers between consenting parties, you are against free markets. Period. If you support anti-trust ie success punishment, you oppose free markets.
This narrative mangles how so-called ‘monopolies’ work. Standard Oil attained market dominance by being ultra-efficient and passing the savings on to customers. They never used that dominance to jack up prices because doing so would engender competition.
There’s competition and then there’s ‘competition’. The US has “competition” in its banks with bazillions of them created by anti-branch banking law that results in a bunch of small weak banks with terrible service. Canada needs more foreign entrants not barriers to consolidation. Harper tried to create ‘competition’ in telecoms by reserving spectrum for a fourth entrant and it failed miserably as do all these efforts to introduce artificial non-competition.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-billions-lost-in-ottawas-fourth-wireless-carrier-ambitions
Maybe they’d invest more and provide cheaper service if government didn’t force them to let competitors use their towers, which is repulsive and disincentivizes investment.