A proposed collaboration between Amazon and the University of Ottawa’s business school, focusing in part on the threat that antitrust reform poses to innovation and small businesses, broke down when the e-commerce giant became too “insistent,” “controlling” and unwilling to meet the school’s standards for academic freedom, The Logic has learned.

In 2021, the university’s Telfer School of Management was in negotiations with Amazon to create a “Telfer Digital Economy Initiative.” It was to be modelled on the University of Southern California Marshall’s Amazon-sponsored Initiative on Digital Competition, according to an email dated Dec. 13, 2021 from Telfer dean Stéphane Brutus to James Price, the university’s executive director of external relations and engagement and development. The Logic obtained the correspondence through an access-to-information request.

The proposal itself, marked confidential, is blacked out. A February 2022 email from Brutus to Price included a brief description, though it is unclear from the documents who wrote it.

“The initiative will focus on regulation and policy recommendations for promoting e-commerce, entrepreneurship and foreign investment in Canada,” it reads. “This of course dovetails with messaging on competition and how certain reforms proposed by the Canadian Bureau of Competition and others risk undermining small businesses and innovation in Canada. This initiative is not related to digital issues such as data privacy, ethical AI, etc.”

Amazon has actively opposed antitrust reform in Canada. In 2021, James Maunder, then the company’s public policy director for Canada, said it would shutter its e-commerce platform Marketplace in Canada should the federal government adopt changes to the country’s competition laws similar to those being legislated in the U.S., a recording obtained by The Logic revealed. Maunder left the company shortly after the article was published.

In an emailed response to questions about the talks with Telfer, Amazon spokesperson Kristin Gable said, “Like many other companies with significant investments and job creation in Canada, we contribute to policy dialogues on a wide range of topics, and we always respect the independence of our partners.” Reached for comment, Brutus wouldn’t say whether Telfer approached Amazon, or whether the company initiated the relationship with the school. 

The documents suggest the scope of the proposal was in line with Amazon’s behind-the-scenes campaign against Canada’s planned changes to its Competition Act. Competition Bureau commissioner Matthew Boswell has stressed the need for such changes in part to deter anti-competitive conduct by digital-marketplace giants like Amazon. In March, the bureau submitted more than 50 recommendations to the government to “help modernize and strengthen” the act.

Brutus circulated the proposal to at least one other department at the university—the law school—according to the emails. One suggested change was to have the Amazon funds put in a blind trust to keep the company at arm’s length from research conducted under the initiative, according to a source familiar with the affair, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to share information about the discussions. 

“Once we get everyone’s input, we can see if there is convergence, summarize it all and get back to Amazon,” Brutus wrote on Feb. 28, 2022. Two days later, he suggested changes to the proposal, which are also blacked out. “We should aim to get back to Amazon next week or the one after, at the latest,” Brutus wrote.

Three weeks later, Brutus wrote an email to Marie-Eve Sylvestre, the vice-dean of the university’s civil law section. “There is some water in the gas as they’ve become a bit more insistent [and] controlling in regards to focus. I clearly established the guidelines and the freedom we expect. We’ll see what happens but I’m no longer sure that they are interested in going to the ball with us,” Brutus wrote, in French. “Should it fail, I intend to recycle the proposal to another sponsor.”

Neither Sylvestre nor common-law section dean Kristen Boon responded to a list of questions, while a university spokesperson declined to comment on the initiative in an email to The Logic. “Discussions with outside organizations are quite routine in the university environment and we often explore potential projects with partners who can help realize exciting initiatives that advance learning experience and research at UOttawa. Not all worthwhile initiatives come to fruition, as was the case for this novel forum to study competition in an age of rapid technological transformation from expert industry and academic perspectives,” wrote media relations director Jesse Robichaud.

Amazon’s past efforts to influence debate over antitrust reform in Canada have focused heavily on academics, experts and public policy institutes. In the recording obtained last fall by The Logic, Maunder cited “the work we’ve been doing” with U.S. law professor Daniel Sokol and former Competition Bureau Canada commissioner John Pecman, both of whom have published reports critical of Canada’s Competition Act reform that appeared on C.D. Howe’s website. Amazon Canada was a major donor to C.D. Howe in 2021 and 2022, according to think-tank financial reports. (Sokol said Amazon didn’t compensate him or have any input in his published works.)

The documents also contain correspondence between Brutus and Melanie Aitken, a former Competition Bureau commissioner who now serves as co-head of the competition and foreign investment practice at the law firm Bennett Jones. Their exchange includes a March 24, 2022 email, in which Brutus updated Aitken on the progression of the file within the university.

Aitken’s role in the discussions isn’t clear from the documents, but she has criticized the bureau in the past for its interactions with Amazon. Last year, during what was billed as a “fireside chat” at the University of Toronto with Pecman on competition reform, she decried a public request by the bureau for input into its investigation of the company, describing the invitation as “a press release issued against Amazon.”

Aitken, who is based in Bennett Jones’s Washington, D.C. office, didn’t respond to an emailed list of questions about the nature of her involvement, and hung up when contacted by phone. Neither Brutus nor Amazon’s Gable responded to a question regarding Aitken’s involvement.

Daniel Sokol also serves as co-director of USC Marshall’s Initiative on Digital Competition, with fellow professor Anthony Dukes. According to an email from Price to Colin Baril, Telfer’s alumni engagement and community partnerships director, “Amazon also put money into” the USC Marshall program. Amazon’s donation to the school isn’t disclosed on the initiative’s website.

Sokol and Dukes sought donations from corporations and individuals for the USC digital-competition initiative, spokesperson Sara Bamossy told The Logic in an email. “Amazon is one of multiple donors to the Initiative on Digital Competition since it was founded,” Bamossy said. Amounts given to the program are kept confidential, she added, but are “unrestricted,” meaning donors do not steer or get input into the initiative’s activities.

Amazon has lauded Canadian small businesses for their “successes, resilience and entrepreneurial spirit.” Yet in feedback submitted as part of the government’s Competition Act review, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said the company regularly imposes “arbitrary fees” on small businesses, promotes its own products over small-business offerings and throttles small business listings in its search tool.

Clarification: This story was updated to clarify the meaning of “unrestricted” in relation to donations to USC Marshall’s Initiative on Digital Competition.