Economics Matters Ep. 19: 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 me 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.

About our guests:

Vass Bednar

Vass Bednar is the executive director of McMaster University’s Master of Public Policy 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.” Vass is a contributing columnist at The Globe and Mail and the host of their podcast, Lately. She is the co-author of The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians with Denise Hearn. 

Denise Hearn

Denise Hearn is an author, applied researcher, and advisor who collaborates with governments, financial institutions, companies, and nonprofits on economic and climate policy and organizational strategy. She is currently a Resident Senior Fellow at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, at Columbia University.

Denise is co-author of The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians and The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition (named one of the Financial Times’ Best Books of 2024). 

Denise’s writing has been translated into 10 languages, and featured in publications such as: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, The Globe and Mail, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and The Washington Post.