Opinion: Five reasons Canada’s Digital Charter will be a bust before it even gets going

. And this matters. Even at a mundane level, free-to-play game apps collect an enormous amount of potentially valuable data. Companies such as Google and Facebook make most of their money from these apps nowadays, according to David Nieborg, a media studies professor at the University of Toronto. Data on our app use can be used for advertising, targeting us directly depending on our tendency to make in-app purchases.

Second, the economic value of our personal data depends on it being turned into a private asset, especially if this is a monopoly asset. Data companies – such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Uber – want as much of our personal data as they can get, and they don’t want to share it with others. Whichever of these data companies can turn our personal data into a resource that provides the best means to make money will win – in whichever sector they operate, perhaps eventually across all sectors.

Third, financial investors already expect this market concentration and monopoly to happen in the future, which is why so many are willing to bet on loss-making companies now. How else do we explain the fact that Uber’s recent IPO valued it at US$76-billion – higher than Ford’s market capitalization – despite never generating profits.

Fourth, monopolies work where there is little regulation, or little appetite for regulation – so it matters what sort of teeth we can find in the Digital Charter. Yet, in an interview for The Tyee, John Pecman – ex-commissioner of the federal Competition Bureau – argues that monopoly represents a specifically Canadian economic strategy.

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