5 Small things to keep in mind for July 22, 2022

1) Amazon's activities to lower Canadian taxes

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Fascinating read into how Amazon guided their American leadership to act in order to save Canadian income tax.

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2) 'Stop approving telecom mergers’

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A great piece from Anja Karadeglija on Xplore Mobile shutting down. Some background – Bell Canada re-purchased Manitoba Telecom Services in 2017. The Manitoba government purchased the assets of Bell Canada to form MTS in 1908.

To maintain “competition” in the mobile market in Manitoba, the competition bureau required MTS to sell some of their wireless business to Xplornet and the deal closed on March 17, 2017. In a key part of this deal, Bell agreed to provide Xplore Mobile expedited access to its towers for 5 years.

Then 5 years and 4 months after the closing of the deal, and 4 months after the expedited access to Bell's towers expired Xplore Mobile shut down. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Xplore Mobile carcass from here.

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3) Business push back on competition policy reform

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In episode 1 of my podcast I talk about how critics of Competition Policy reform try to use arguments like ‘you just think big is bad’ as a way to stop or change the topic of discussion.

This article is another example. Charlie MacCready is executive vice president and chief legal officer at Dye & Durham. He wrote this op-ed as a rebuttal to an op-ed Vass Bednar wrote wondering why Dye & Durham is being investigated by the UK and Australian competition authorities, but not the Canadian.

I didn't find MacCready actually engaged with the arguments Vass laid out. Instead he tried to change the subject. As the conversation for Competition Policy reform, watch for this tactic by the incumbents.

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4) Something to watch – Anti-Monopoly, Explained

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5) Progress?

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