Do Not Pass Go by Peter Nowak

Do Not Pass Go by Peter Nowak
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Do Not Pass is a weekly podcast and newsletter dedicated to reporting on and exposing corporate concentration and monopoly issues in Canada. Hosted and produced by veteran journalist Peter Nowak, Do Not Pass Go delivers original and truly independent investigative journalism. www.donotpassgo.ca

  1. Why Is One Company Controlling All Of Toronto's Sports?

    1D AGO

    Why Is One Company Controlling All Of Toronto's Sports?

    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. Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

    43 min
  2. America's Enshittification is Canada's Opportunity

    FEB 9

    America's Enshittification is Canada's Opportunity

    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. Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

    1h 6m
  3. Does Canada Still Need Giants to Survive?

    FEB 2

    Does Canada Still Need Giants to Survive?

    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. Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

    34 min
  4. Why Cheaper Groceries Might Require Public Ownership

    JAN 29

    Why Cheaper Groceries Might Require Public Ownership

    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. Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

    36 min
  5. The Quiet American Takeover of Banff and Jasper

    JAN 26

    The Quiet American Takeover of Banff and Jasper

    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) Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

    41 min
  6. Telecom complaints are exploding – and exposing the affordability crisis

    JAN 19

    Telecom complaints are exploding – and exposing the affordability crisis

    Telecom service complaints continue to skyrocket, with the ombudsman that deals with them reporting a 17-per-cent increase to a new record of 23,647 for the year ended July 31. It’s the third year in a row that complaints have set a record, according to the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services. Wireless services led the way, with television and higher set-top-box fees close behind. Contract disputes, unexpected price increases and promises that weren’t honoured – basically all the things that consumers routinely deal with when it comes to telecom. It’s a broken record. Canada’s big telecom companies – Bell, Rogers and Telus – are basically the poster children for oligopolies, and therefore oligopolistic behaviour. Absent concrete action by the government to address the industry’s structural failures, it’s a story that’s bound to continue repeating. There is a small change in this tale, however, and that is that the CCTS now has a new boss. After 17-plus years at its helm, founding commissioner Howard Maker has stepped aside and handed the reins to Josée Bidal Thibault, who becomes the organization’s second head. Many Canadians still don’t know about what the CCTS does. Thibault joins Do Not Pass Go this week to discuss her predecessor’s legacy, what she hopes to do differently, and what’s behind the explosion in complaints (spoiler: it’s the affordability crisis). Read the latest CCTS annual report here. Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

    26 min
  7. Could Canadians break up Ticketmaster? They're damn well going to try

    JAN 12

    Could Canadians break up Ticketmaster? They're damn well going to try

    There’s an amazing (and hilarious) video that’s been doing the rounds for the past few years of a 1993 interview with Nirvana about concert ticket prices. As the above photo of frontman Kurt Cobain illustrates, the band was horrified to learn that some artists were charging upwards of $50 to attend one of their shows. Nirvana, meanwhile, was charging around $25. Were he still alive, Cobain might be even more horrified of what ticket prices are like today. Natural inflation aside, the crosshairs for why that’s so are squarely falling on one entity – a company that has taken over and become dominant in nearly every aspect of the concert-going experience: Live Nation Entertainment. Legal and regulatory actions against the company are multiplying rapidly. U.S. antitrust enforcers with the Department of Justice are trying to break the company up while the Federal Trade Commission is suing the company for artificially inflating prices. A host of class-action suits over Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary are proliferating in both the U.S. and Canada. Even the Swifties, still mad over Ticketmaster’s mishandling of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, are continuing their lawsuit. Add a major new Canadian case to this list. Mirroring the DOJ, the Consumers Council of Canada is asking the Competition Tribunal to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Filed over the holidays, it’s among the first cases to take advantage of new competition laws in Canada that allow private parties to bring abuse-of-dominance charges in the name of the public interest. We’ve covered the other two – an indie game developer taking on Google’s search deal with Apple, and the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic case against Apple’s App Store – here on Do Not Pass Go. It’s clear that this is a growing wave. Neil Hartung, a lawyer and director with the Consumers Council, joins the podcast this week to explain why the advocacy group is taking a stand and why it thinks it can actually break up a giant American company. (Read the filing here) It’s worth noting that literally no one else is covering this movement, which is why it’s amazing that you’re here. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support this important work. Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

    36 min
  8. This might be the most Canadian social app ever

    JAN 5

    This might be the most Canadian social app ever

    Happy 2026 to all! It’s going to be better than 2025, right? Right?!? Hopefully so. But before we dive back into how bad things are, let’s start the new year off with a potentially good news story – which is that there’s about to be a new social media player in town, and it’s Canadian. Gander Social is targeting a first-quarter launch and is aiming to be a kinder, gentler social media platform, which is another way of saying of course it’s Canadian. And aside from trying to be better than the other bot-infested rage farms out there, Gander is also differentiating itself by laying down sovereign roots: Canadian hosting that’s free from the dictates of any foreign mad king. The company blew through its crowd-funding goals late last year by raising $1.5 million and has more than 35,000 users waiting to get onto its app, which is borrowing some of the best aspects of BlueSky, TikTok, LinkedIn and others while trying to avoid their worst pitfalls. (Full disclosure: I chipped in some bucks through that crowd-funding effort.) Chief executive and co-founder Ben Waldman joins Do Not Pass Go to discuss how Gander is going to be different from other platforms and whether the world needs another social media app in the first place. Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe

    37 min
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About

Do Not Pass is a weekly podcast and newsletter dedicated to reporting on and exposing corporate concentration and monopoly issues in Canada. Hosted and produced by veteran journalist Peter Nowak, Do Not Pass Go delivers original and truly independent investigative journalism. www.donotpassgo.ca

Information

  • Creator
    Do Not Pass Go by Peter Nowak
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    24
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Peter Nowak
  • Show Website
    Do Not Pass Go by Peter Nowak

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