Dear Americans, Canada is run by powerful Cartels

[Goddess]

I found this Op-Ed, by Cosmin Dzsurdzsa of Juno News, quite enlightening.

He discusses the Canadian "cartels" dominated by old, moneyed family dynasties that are running things - Rogers & Shaw in telecommunications (The Digital Services Act), the Irvings (oil & shipbuilding), the Westons (retail).

He points out how every sticking point in our current CUSMA trade disputes with the US can be understood through this lens.

See what you think:

Dear Americans, Canada is run by powerful Cartels

Canada as a nation is not particularly difficult to understand if you spend even a small amount of time thinking about how the system actually operates and I think the Americans are starting to catch on.

 

It goes like this: Canadian governments exist, to varying degrees, largely as protectionist rackets with the sole purpose of preserving a series of entrenched industry monopolies and cartels. These cartels are largely dominated by a small number of old, moneyed family dynasties (the Rogers and Shaws in telecommunications, the Irvings in oil and shipbuilding, the Westons in food retail, and many others). For simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to these powerful, dynamic industry groups as “The Cartels” going forward.

 

This is the basic operating theory of Canadian politics. Once you understand it, almost everything else begins to make sense.

 

Nearly every sticking point in Canada’s ongoing USMCA trade disputes with the United States can be understood through this lens (more on that shortly). First, it’s worth exploring the broader implications of this operating theory.

 

The implication is that virtually every piece of legislation, every policy choice made by the government-of-the-day, and every trade relationship is viewed internally as a zero-sum game: net gains or net losses for The Cartels. The public interest is often secondary and incidental.

 

Canadian governments win or lose elections and sometimes tear themselves apart based on how well they balance the sometimes competing interests of The Cartels. Some of The Cartels are more closely aligned with Conservative governments, others with Liberal ones. But the most powerful and deeply entrenched of The Cartels almost always emerge unscathed, regardless of which party is in power.

 

By far, the Liberal party, often self-indulgently described by Canada’s Laurentian elites as the country’s “natural governing party” has proven the most adept at protecting cartel interests. The Liberals excel at this game because they understand how to obscure the underlying reality: that laws and decisions are made primarily to protect monopolies, by wrapping those decisions in branding that appeals to Canadian identity, culture, sentimentality, or phoney nationalism. Take dairy as a clear example.

 

For those unaware, dairy and other agricultural goods in Canada are determined by a supply management system, essentially a central planning system where bureaucrats determine quotas, supply and dictate pricing. Supply management has been a persistent flashpoint in USMCA negotiations. U.S. President Donald Trump has personally called out Canada’s "250% tax" on dairy products, and American negotiators have repeatedly pushed to put dairy access on the table, much to Ottawa’s chagrin.

 

Why won’t Ottawa budge?

The answer is simple: the dairy cartel. Within Canada, and especially within Conservative circles, much has already been said about the outsized political influence of the dairy cartel across both major federal parties. Anyone who witnessed the 2017 Conservative Party of Canada leadership race will quickly see how radioactive this issue became (but that is a separate can of worms best left unopened here). What matters is that the dairy cartel is not merely influential; it is legally entrenched. Entire statutory frameworks and government bodies exist, namely the Farm Products Agencies Act and the Canadian Dairy Commission, solely to serve their interests. This is cartel behaviour, formalized by law.

 

Now consider the Digital Services Act. As recently as yesterday, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick explicitly raised this issue
while speaking at the World Economic Forum, calling out Canada’s insistence on taxing U.S. digital products. What’s notable is that opposition to Canada’s digital taxes has been bipartisan in the United States. Even the former U.S. trade representative under Democratic President Joe Biden, Katherine Tai, expressed frustration with Ottawa’s approach and requested dispute settlement over this issue. On this particular tax, Canada has retreated and recently rescinded the tax.

But the question remains: why did Canada fight tooth and nail under threat of tariffs and consequences to preserve this tax? Because of the media and telecommunications cartel.

 

The Digital Services Act is only one iteration of an entire web of legislation and trade policy designed to preserve the media/telecoms cartel. The Digital Services Act, the Online Streaming Act, and the Online News Act are all part of the same architecture. These laws are the reason Canadians can no longer access news on Facebook to this day. The media/telecom cartel, organized through lobbying groups such as News Media Canada, successfully pushed these measures through under the guise of fairness and cultural protection. But the underlying reason is far less flattering: Canada’s legacy media sector cannot compete with American firms due to chronic deficiencies in talent, innovation, scale, and human capital. Without protection, subsidization, and forced revenue transfers, the system collapses.

The reason I highlight dairy and media/telecom specifically is not only because they are central to Canada’s trade disputes with the United States, but because they illustrate how effectively the Canadian government has sold these protectionist regimes to voters. Supply management is framed as a patriotic necessity. Canadians are told that dairy farmers must dump millions of litres of milk down the drain each year to meet quota targets because Canadian dairy is inherently superior to American dairy.

Media subsidies and telecom monopolies are justified as essential to preserving culture, heritage, and a disingenuous "Canadian nationalism." Any appeal to preserving Canadian sovereignty should at this point be considered an appeal to preserving the system of The Cartel I have just laid out for you. These narratives work. They ensured compliance. And it certainly helps that Canada’s media ecosystem itself is thoroughly monopolized (a point I have addressed at length elsewhere).

So you see, the system is actually quite simple. The same logic applies to many of Canada’s most questionable laws and trade practices. And to return to my original point: I think Americans are beginning to understand this faster than Ottawa likes to think.

For years, Canada’s Laurentian elite appeared to believe they had successfully hoodwinked their American “partners”, that the U.S. was asleep at the wheel while Canada quietly enriched The Cartels and hardened their monopolies, all with a sense of duper's delight.

Unfortunately for them, the giant is awake and it’s not falling for the tricks anymore.

[SpankyMcFarland]

Any country that shares a language with a much larger one right beside it faces the same concerns about foreign influence as we do. Go to Ireland  or Pakistan and you’ll hear similar conversations. In addition, social media poses multiple novel threats to our privacy, local news media, childhood development and social cohesion that we are just beginning to understand. We are still in the Marlboro Man stage on this industry and its dangers. 

On agriculture, the reality is very different from what some Americans allege. In 2024, Canada was the second-highest importer of U.S. dairy products, buying about $1.14 billion US, and was the top market for eggs and related products. The total agricultural exports to Canada amounted to about $28.2 billion US in 2023! Does that sound like we are shutting the US out? In addition, America still turns a blind eye to the thousands of illegal workers in its dairy and agricultural industries and then indignantly insists we must import even more of these illegally produced items. 

Let’s reform sensibly. For example, I have no need of Canadian content or local oligopolies when it comes to the companies providing cellphone and Internet services. By comparison with Europe, our cellphones contracts still cost too much here IMO. 
 

 

 

 

[eyeball]

3 hours ago, Goddess said:

See what you think:

Dear Americans, Canada is run by powerful Cartels

Gosh, you're so woke...finally. Why I even bet you think going into Iraq was dumb.

In any case, if they really are running things they don't seem to be any better at making busses run on time.

Lobby the CRA to help create deductible financial instruments or some such thing? Sure...betchya they couldn't get rid of DST if their lives depended on it though.  LMAO!

 

[eyeball]

1 hour ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

In addition, social media poses multiple novel threats to our privacy, local news media, childhood development and social cohesion that we are just beginning to understand. We are still in the Marlboro Man stage on this industry and its dangers. 

This is called being wide awoke.

👍

[Barquentine]

13 hours ago, Goddess said:

I found this Op-Ed, by Cosmin Dzsurdzsa of Juno News, quite enlightening

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/juno-news-bias-and-credibility/
Overall, we rate Juno News as Right Biased due to its consistently critical coverage of the Liberal Party, frequent emphasis on immigration and national security issues, and editorial framing that aligns with conservative viewpoints.

Surprise, surprise...

[SpankyMcFarland]

Monopolistic behaviour is not confined to Canada. Look at the way Facebook and Google are allowed by heavily lobbied US politicians to buy up potential competition. The only country that has resisted this trend is China, hardly a model of open markets itself. 

[ironstone]

4 hours ago, Barquentine said:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/juno-news-bias-and-credibility/
Overall, we rate Juno News as Right Biased due to its consistently critical coverage of the Liberal Party, frequent emphasis on immigration and national security issues, and editorial framing that aligns with conservative viewpoints.

Surprise, surprise...

And how does the CBC, CTV, or Global compare to Juno News as far as left-right bias is concerned?

[SpankyMcFarland]

Here’s another thing I don’t see a justification for: restrictive covenants in malls that stop competition. 

Quote

Canada’s biggest grocery giants — including Loblaws, Sobeys and Metro — are using property law to control how other grocery stores, dollar stores, pharmacies and gas stations can compete with them, an investigation by CBC’s Marketplace has found.

Property controls are deals made between a land owner and a retailer that restrict what other kinds of businesses can operate on the property and what the competitors are able to sell. The terms are negotiated to incentivize the retailer to open their store on the land.

Quote

“These are not mom-and-pop shops,” said Jim Stanford, an economist and grocery industry critic. “They are not subject to the same competitive constraints as firms in other industries.”

Marketplace obtained legal documents for dozens of properties across Canada — locked behind opaque systems and paywalls — and found several property controls buried in lease agreements or even registered directly on property titles. The scope of the terms negotiated by grocery giants varied significantly from property to property.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/grocery-giants-control-9.7055067?cmp=rss