CBOT - Monday, May 27, 2024 - 06:00 a.m. (ET) - Segment #2

a fraudster hi hi jacked her account and took her friends for thousands of dollars. As they were getting swindled the social media giant did nothing. >> None was true. Her online friends who thought they were buying the stuff were swindled out of thousands including her former neighbour. >> I thought it was my friend lisa. >> Reporter: last year canadians lost more than $174 million in social media scams. According to the canadian anti-fraud centre, she and her friends reported the crime to Facebook. The company did nothing to stop it. >> I felt bad for thearve their money was taken away. >> Reporter: meta the company behind Facebook says it does a lot to detect malicious activity yet go public found the same scam that got laury and her friend is running rampant on the site. When asked why it's failing to detect a scam it's been warned about, meta didn't respond. The company made about $185 billion in revenue last year. Cyber crime expert says it's time to invest a lot more into protecting users. >> The organizations need to respond to people's actual needs. >> Reporter: meta employs over 15,000 people around the world to review potential violations but won't say why it failed to take action in the case. Cbc news, calgary. >> Peter: and that's the latest national and international news from "world report." for news any time go to cbc news.ca. This is cbc news. . >> Hallie: good morning. I'm hallie cotnam. You're listening to "ottawa morning." it's monday, may 27th. [ ] >> Hallie: the competition bureau has launched an investigation into sobeys and loblaws. What it means for big grocery. Food banks canada has released its 2024 poverty report card. Ontario gets a d minus. We'll unpack the poor grade and get an assessment how we're responding to food insecurity. Ever wonder about all those flags ottawa puts up for foreign dignitary visits. >> Robyn: so you would have flags of small countries? >> Yes. >> Hallie: we'll hear robyn bresnahan's tour of a flag warehouse. [ ] >> Hallie: cloudy today with showers early this morning and again this afternoon. Risk of a thunderstorm. Quite a lot of rain to be honest, 30 to 40 millimetres expected. The high today 23° at times feeling like 28° under a high U.V. index. A low of 15°. Cloudy tomorrow with showers beginning near noon, another 5 to 10 millimetres expected tomorrow. David gerow now from the cbc ottawa newsroom. Hi, david. >> David: hey, hallie. Nearly three years ago after a wheel fell off one of the citadis spirit rail cars, they want the work to resume. The latest plan for a mixed-use redevelopment in little italy saves the existing part to the community association, but other elements left them disappointed. Guy quenneville will have for at the bottom of the clock. >> Hallie: doug hempstead joins us. >> Doug: it was a great weekend. >> Hallie: highlights? >> Doug: I decided to do an alternate yard sale and garage sale than the glebe one. I know how busy it gets there and they don't close the streets so it's bonkers. I wasn't up for that and avoiding the race weekend traffic and all that -- all those closed roads. We did some different -- we spent saturday primarily hunting yard sales and found some pretty cool ones. One that was my favourite was actually the trailer park in bells corners, they had a community yard sale and it was awesome fun. >> Hallie: what did you pick up?

>> Doug: I got some records, surprise, surprise. I got a really cool matching pink flamingo, a metallic pink flamingo. We already had one, it was a gift from a child, and now I've got a matching one for the backyard. But I got a 3-d last supper. [ Laughter ]. >> Doug: I've got a garish religious theme in our guest bathroom. >> Hallie: I was going to say where are you going to put that, in the man cave? >> Doug: our guest bathroom has a garish religious theme. >> Hallie: on the roads? >> Doug: no problems on the 417 headed downtown, eastbound and westbound no issues. The 174 coming in from or through orléans. Over in gatineau the westbound 50 and the southbound 5 both fine. It's showing me the champlain bridge is closed headed towards gatineau. I don't believe that's still the case. They were doing work on it. It wouldn't have been closed for race weekend because there were no routes going to gatineau. I'm going to take a check that google thinks that's closed and nothing else that I've seen suggests it is. >> Hallie: canadian grocery giants sobeys and loblaws could be in hot water. Canada's competition bureau launched an investigation into anti-competitive business practices by their parent companies. Sobeys' owner is calling it unlawful. We reached jennifer quaid, a professor of law. >> Good morning. >> Hallie: seeing as you're here, did you run in the marathon or head over to the glebe garage sale, what did you do? >> No, I did not. I did what a lot of people did, I gardened. >> Hallie: me too. Given the grocery store situation, what are they alleged to have done that prompted the investigation in the first place? >> The investigation is focused on how parent companies in particular by the fact that they hold ownership interests in real estate trusts and so on, how they might use contract clauses in lease agreements to basically limit or otherwise kind of put restrictions on the way businesses in certain malls or properties can operate. And I guess the concern is the ability for those landlords to impose conditions on tenants which are other competitors to the grocery stores can be sort of used as a way to restrict what those competitor grocery stores are doing. >> Hallie: so if loblaws sells widgets and the little mall that loblaws is in, they could stop another store from selling widgets? >> Yeah, basically we saw that last year with a dollarama out in nova scotia. The significance of that in that case is dollarama's business model is to have fewer brands and offer those brands cheaply. Not being able to sell a certain brand lower than the competing grocery store is a concern for them. >> Hallie: in terms of retail or grocery, what does anti-competitive actually mean? >> So the competition act basically says that in order for there to be some kind of opportunity to have a remedy or to intervene, the impact on competition has to be substantial. So it's not just any competitor in effect has to reach a certain level. It's obviously at this stage not possible to know exactly how much information the bureau has gathered and how far it's looking because both the players they're looking at are quite large and operate across the country or in large regions of the country. I don't know whether they're focused on particular markets or particular types of malls and so on, but for now it could be looking into a fair number of areas. But the main thing is they're always going to have to demonstrate for whatever market it is, whether a local market in the city or whatever it is, that the impact is substantial. And that really means that the person or the company that's operating it is in the position to kind of act without the regular discipline of the market applying on them. So they don't get that extra competitor coming in or something else. >> Hallie: right, but what do you think this investigation could mean for these companies? If they're found to have violated these rules, what might happen to them? >> Well, that is quite an intriguing question.

at this point, under the current rules in the competition act which were just changed in december and actually could change again in a bill that's before parliament, at the moment what the bureau can seek is basically for the court to make an order. So they'll say, hey, court, what we need to do is have these companies agree to not do this or maybe something else, maybe they have to agree to separate or somehow prevent the real estate arm from influencing the grocery arm and that might be through separating the decision making or keeping those people apart. It's hard to know right now because until you define the problem, you don't know what the solution is. >> Hallie: might it have an impact on people looking for better prizes at these grocery stores? Might it have a trickle-down effect? >> That's the basic belief that competitive markets are supposed to produce the best prices and the best conditions for what consumers want. I mean, not all consumers want the cheapest prices. Some people want more choice and some want better quality. At the end of the day, that's what you hope. But if you expect a direct causal link between the remedy that might be obtained from a court and prices, I think it's not that straightforward. So you would hope in the long run you would see that, but it's not as though part of the court order will be you shall charge lower prices. >> Hallie: interesting. Thank you so much. That was jennifer quaid an associate professor at the university of ottawa's faculty of law. [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] >> Hallie: that's australian musician daniel champagne with "do you wonder." he had a couple of shows at the neat and at the red bird. 23 minutes past 6:00. Food banks canada has released 2024 poverty report card. The annual grading tracks how

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