# Monopoly Man (w/ Peter Nowak)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-hatchet-7116624/monopoly-man-w-peter-nowak
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-hatchet-7116624/monopoly-man-w-peter-nowak.md
Podcast: [The Hatchet](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-hatchet-7116624)
Published: 2025-10-04T10:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://hatchetmedia.ca/p/monopoly-man-w-peter-nowak
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/175250587/1210f2e08090b3e56927cd62721e4b47.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-hatchet-7116624/episodes/monopoly-man-w-peter-nowak
Duration seconds: 2204

## Resource

Back a few years ago, there was this moment where it felt like there was a movement building against monopolies. It started in the United States with academics like Lena Khan and Tim Wu and journalists like Matt Stoller speaking out about the creeping corporate concentration that was infecting so much of American life. Eventually that movement found purchase in the Biden administration, which put antitrust at the centre of their agenda. And because Canada is always a little bit behind the United States, we got our own version of that movement. And in a weird way, Jordan and I were both a part of that, when in 2022 and 2023 we put out our series on Monopolies on Canadaland COMMONS . It really felt like momentum was building and that everyday people were getting more and more upset about the domination of the big banks and the big telcos and the big grocery chains. But recently, it’s felt like that momentum has kind of….gone away. And there’s still plenty of people working on this issues here, but at least in terms of journalism, the trade war and the Trump administration and a million other things seem to have distracted away from what I still believe is such an essential issue. And that’s why I was so excited to get an email from Peter Nowak a few months ago. He said he had an idea and wanted to talk. Now for those of you don’t know Peter, he’s a longtime journalist who has done some amazing work over the years. When I was getting interested in business reporting more than a decade ago, Peter was one of the best out there. His main focus was the telecom industry. And that was a really interesting time for the telecoms. The Harper government was actually putting some pressure on them and had appointed an aggressive CRTC commissioner instead of just the usual corporate t…

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## Transcript

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