5mo ago

Competition Bureau says it's probing whether landlords are using AI to set rents

8 comments

Or, hear me out, you could (at the federal level) direct the CMHC build public housing at 1970s levels, and/or (at the provincial level) put rent control back?
Pretty sure it's not illegal either way
- What about price fixing?
  
  If the penalty for the bread price fixing our shitty grocery corps did is any indication, even if it’s already illegal, landlords “breaking the law” will have to pay a fine of a couple dollars and be told they should feel very, very bad because they’ve been very naughty.
  
  Price fixing only works when there are a small number of players. There are literally millions of landlords in Canada.
- It might not be enforced but an industry using a single set of pricing guidelines is a cartel and that level of collusion is illegal. This has been litigated before in the US - I'm not well versed enough in Canadian history to say whether it's happened up here as well. This specifically would be a single third party directing price fixing for an industry and is one way people have tried to evade anti-monopoly rules in the past.

8 comments