This was one of the more surprising things to me when I lived in Canada: that there is so much of this. Depending on which region you are in you will either have state monopolies on the strangest things and/or a couple of families that have their fingers in just about every pie. And don't get me started on the telecommunications sector.

I wonder if this is largely a function of geography and population. Do we see similar strange things in countries like Australia, Sweden, etc.? Kind of like a small town effect at the national scale.

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