Do Not Pass Go by Peter Nowak

Baseball spring training is here! Hurray!
Whether or not you’re a fan, it’s a symbolic reminder that the end of winter is just around the corner. It’s a time of celebration akin to the best pagan renewal rituals.
But we’re not here to talk about the pending arrival of spring and sunnier days ahead. We’re here to discuss the problem in Toronto sports in general, and Canadian sports overall. And that is the monopoly that one company – Rogers Communications – has over all of it.
After buying out its “rival” Bell’s share of Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment last year, Rogers now owns 75 per cent of the company and therefore full control of its properties, which include the Maple Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC, the Argos and several other teams.
Along with the Blue Jays, which Rogers bought in 2000, the company also owns the Rogers Centre (it’s still Skydome in these parts), the Scotiabank Arena, television broadcast rights and much of the media that covers the teams.
Strangely, no one is doing anything about it. The Competition Bureau gave the MLSE transaction a pass in late 2024 and didn’t even say why.
David Shoalts is an award-winning veteran of Canadian sports journalism. He spent decades covering sports for The Globe and Mail and, in 2018, published the latest of his three books: Hockey Fight in Canada, about how the CBC lost its NHL broadcast rights to Rogers.
He joins Do Not Pass Go to discuss how Rogers’ sports monopoly is bad news for fans – not just when it comes to the prices they pay for tickets, snacks and beer, but also in how the teams are covered in the media and how that can affect their chances of winning.
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Enshittification – it’s a word you’ve doubtlessly heard before, especially if you’ve been reading or listening here.
It’s a term that neatly and cheekily encapsulates how everything, from our digital devices and streaming services to real-world retail stores and even health care, have gotten worse.
It’s also the title of a new book by Cory Doctorow, the Toronto-born digital rights activist, science-fiction author and coiner of the word itself, which has won accolades including Word of the Year from the American Dialect Society in 2023 and the Macquarie Dictionary in 2024.
Doctorow is everywhere these days expounding on his book, which has hit on the zeitgeist in a way that few others do. It’s probably because everyone instinctively knows exactly what he’s talking about.
He was recently in Toronto for a joint talk at the Hot Docs theatre with his childhood friend, former Biden administration advisor and fellow Do Not Pass Go podcast guest Tim Wu, who unfortunately ended up participating via video call because of travel problems.
Prior to the event, Doctorow sat down with us for a very special recorded interview at Bakka-Phoenix, the science-fiction bookstore where he worked as a teenager.
In this conversation, we discuss the uniquely American aspect of Enshittification – and how the rift with our neighbour is presenting Canada with a golden opportunity to escape a big part of it.
Check out all things Cory Doctorow at his Craphound site and buy Enshittification here. Photo courtesy Gage Skidmore on Flickr.
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Back in October, former Conservative party leader and Prime Minister candidate Erin O’Toole argued that monopolies and oligopolies aren’t necessarily all bad at a University of Toronto debate on the subject.
They were instrumental in building Canada in the first place, and keeping the country free from domination by the United States in its formative years.
As the saying goes, everything old is new again, and Canada once again finds itself between a veritable rock and a hard place – an aggressive and increasingly unfriendly neighbour and a need to rein in corporate concentration and the affordability crisis it’s contributing to.
O’Toole knows a thing or two about consumer issues and national security. Prior to politics, he worked as a competition lawyer for Procter & Gamble and served in the military for 12 years, where he earned the Canadian Forces Decoration distinction.
After the Conservatives lost the 2021 election, he returned to the private sector, where he is currently the president and managing director of risk advisory firm ADIT North America.
He joins Do Not Pass Go to discuss Canada’s difficult geopolitical situation and its equally difficult effort to bring oligopolies to heel, plus he sings a few bars of Gordon Lightfoot.
Check out his Blue Skies Substack here.
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In an effort to tackle out-of-control unaffordability, Prime Minister Mark Carney is upping the GST rebate and renaming it the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit. A family of four will get nearly $1,900 in credits this year and $1,400 in each of the next four years.
But is that enough to counter the problem of skyrocketing grocery prices?
In Canada, five giants control more than 80 per cent of the market – Loblaw, Sobeys, Metro, Costco and Walmart. And while they blame other factors such as supply chain problems for rising prices, their continually rising profits – and profit margins – suggest oligopoly is also at cause.
It’s why the idea of public grocery stores – those owned or operated by government – are gaining cachet. New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani recently rode the promise of establishing public grocery stores to an election victory while here in Canada, federal NDP leadership candidate Avi Lewis is making them part of his pitch to voters.
The concept has been criticized, notably by the Globe and Mail, as unworkable, but a group of food experts beg to differ. In a recent paper, they’ve worked out the math and suggest that public grocery stores aren’t just possible in Canada, they’re necessary to provide competition and price discrimination to the oligopoly.
Aaron Vansintjan, policy manager at advocacy group Food Secure Canada, joins Do Not Pass Go to discuss how public grocery stores would lead to lower prices for consumers.
Read the paper by Vansintjan and his colleagues here.
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There’s a battle going on over Canada’s crown jewels: Banff and Jasper.
With more than 6 million annual visitors between them, the two national parks are the nation’s biggest tourist attraction – not to mention the symbolic image of natural beauty that many people around the world picture when they think of Canada.
But a single company has rolled up nearly all of the market for paid attractions, including gondolas and boat rides, plus a third of the hotels in Banff. And worse yet, critics say, it’s an American company: Denver-based Pursuit Attractions and Hospitality.
The Competition Bureau investigated the company’s roll-up last year but chose not to take action because of jurisdiction issues with Parks Canada, the federal agency responsible for national parks.
That prompted the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project watchdog to call on the government to intervene by breaking up Pursuit and requiring Parks Canada to consider competition issues in national parks going forward.
Perhaps the biggest supporter of that stance is Adam Waterous, an oil tycoon from Toronto who also owns the Mount Norquay ski resort in Banff and the local train station.
Waterous joins Do Not Pass Go this week to discuss how Pursuit’s monopoly is raising attraction prices and contributing to congestion in the parks. Stuart Back, Pursuit’s chief operating officer for Banff and Jasper, also joins us to refute the charges.
The Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project brief on Pursuit’s holdings in Banff and Jasper can be found here.
(Photo courtesy of Flickr user rvdbrugge, CC BY-NC 2.0)
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