Fixing Canada’s Problems with Competition with Vass Bednar and Denise Hearn

Some argue that market concentration in their sectors is inevitable. They say Canada’s small population, vast geography, and global competition create natural monopolies—and that protecting their dominance is necessary to build globally competitive companies.

But is that true?

In this episode, the co-authors of the book The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians, Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar join us to talk about the realities of competition in Canada and the steps we need to take to inject more competition into the economy. They dug into Canada’s competitive landscape and what they found may surprise you.  There are the commonly known challenges: we have three major telecommunications companies, five grocers, a few big banks, two major airlines and a train company.  But beyond these common stats, they found a competitive and corporate landscape that is reducing competition well beyond these big sectors. Concentration in half of Canadian industries has increased by 40 per cent since 1998.

In this episode, we learn about how competition has eroded and ways in which we can begin to inject more competition into the Canadian economy.

Vass Bednar

Executive Director, Master of Public Policy, McMaster University

Denise Hearn

Resident Senior Fellow, Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, Columbia University