The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians (The McGill Max Bell Lectures, 2)

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.

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 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."