Canada loves its cartels and monopolies. In fact, the government once openly formed the Uranium Cartel, until that was perceived as bad political optics. After that, they went underground. The driver is nationalism, and in Quebec it is micro-nationalism. We have a sparse and spread population, so if we want national champions to keep out the grubby outsiders, we form cartels.
The system works through alcoholic connections at the Empire Club and big parties. The main job of the big bosses is to keep the system going. They devote nearly 100% of their time looking up, and barely control the companies, since the margins are so high and nobody can botch that up.
By charging us poor people twice the going rate for everything, they can keep out the foreign invaders but there is trouble in paradise. Modern technology has not been kind to these organizations. They are used to deploying armies to swat a fly, and have set up rigid hierarchies to achieve this, all following orders from the top. As goes the whole organization, so goes the internal structures (self-similarity, fractal law). All full of wannabee alkies, and preeners. But the invention of internal email and, horrors, the internet has disrupted control. The end result is that they can't do anything involving modern technology, since all of that relies on open communication. The classic case is Blackberry, who achieved monopoly, and joined the Empire Club.
For now the banks can rely on their old mainframes, but 400,000 escapee Canadians in the San Franscisco Bay area are plotting their destruction. My son is starting to zoom with his start-up. It will mean the destruction of the big bank cartel. Uber was the most obvious shot to the taxi monopoly, and Toronto was quick to defend the poor slobs. Will Canada have to protect the banks? I can see the laws being written, even now.
Canada will become worse than France, protecting every old industry from the past 200 years. Meanwhile, more and more bright Canadians will escape stultification.
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