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ISBN: 9781998365227

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The Big Fix

How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians

More and more of the Canadian economy is dominated by a handful of huge companies that control what we buy, how we work, and which other businesses can or can’t thrive. Beyond the obvious examples of airlines, telcos, grocery chains, and banks, The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians shows how corporate concentration is growing across many industries, leading to higher prices for consumers, lower worker’s wages, more inequality, fewer startups, less innovation, and lower growth and productivity. In this galvanizing book, Hearn and Bednar show how companies perpetuate the illusion of rivalry to disguise their dominance, and how they’ve shifted from competing within industries to accumulating assets across industries, further entrenching their power. The authors coach readers on how to think about competition, how markets are made and remade, and how the right set of attitudes and policies reduce corporate power and rebalance it throughout the economy. The future of Canada’s economy is up for grabs, and The Big Fix shows how the country can achieve a more innovative, productive, and livable economy for all Canadians.

Contributors

Denise Hearn

Denise Hearn is an author, applied researcher, and advisor focused on how economic power and paradigms shape our world. She is a resident senior fellow at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment at Columbia University. Denise co-authored The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition, named a Financial Times best book of 2018.

Vass Bednar

Vass Bednar is the executive director of McMaster University’s Master of Public Policy in Digital Society program. Her work focuses on the intersections between policy and the innovation ecosystem. She is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and writes the popular newsletter “regs to riches."

Chapter Contributors Pages Year Price
In this chapter, Hearn and Bednar examine how market concentration has reshaped the Canadian economy, beginning with the July 2022 Rogers Communications outage and the 2023 Rogers–Shaw merger.
; 6 $0.60
In this chapter, Hearn and Bednar examine how Canadian and global corporations manufacture the illusion of competition.
; 10 $1.00
In this chapter, Hearn and Bednar examine how concentrated corporate players in Canada’s grocery sector wield pricing power over consumers and workers.
; 7 $0.70
In this chapter, Hearn and Bednar examine how dominant firms gatekeep markets, from digital app stores to Canadian cinema.
; 9 $0.90
In this chapter, Hearn and Bednar explore the "Everything Company" model, in which corporations like Amazon accumulate assets across industries through data, cloud computing, and …
; 11 $1.10
In this chapter,Hearn and Bednar examine how generative artificial intelligence, since ChatGPT’s 2022 debut, is entrenching the monopoly power of a handful of dominant technology firms.
; 9 $0.90
In this chapter, Hearn and Bednar examine how concentrated wealth in private equity and mega-corporations has reshaped the Canadian economy between 1993 and 2023.
; 9 $0.90
In this chapter, Hearn and Bednar examine the erosion of consumer trust in digital marketplaces, where counterfeit goods, deceptive pricing, and manipulative practices have become pervasive.
; 6 $0.60
In this chapter, Hearn and Bednar trace Canada’s competition policy from the 1889 Anti-Combines Act to the 1986 Competition Act, examining how neoliberal philosophy and the Chicago …
; 8 $0.80
In this chapter, Hearn and Bednar examine Canada’s June 2024 amendments to the Competition Act and argues for a fundamental reimagining of competition policy.
; 8 $0.80
In this chapter, Hearn and Bednar present a whole-of-government vision for competition policy in Canada, examining how the Competition Bureau could gain independence, how harmful mergers might be …
; 15 $1.50
In this conclusion, Hearn and Bednar examine Canadian resistance to corporate power from the 1990s through 2023.
; 4 $0.40
This "chapter" is a bibliography.
; 22 $2.20