A lot of it is hidden - Canadian banks charge outrageous sums of money for foreign exchange fees. Credit card interchange fees are reliably a full 1% higher than in the US. e-Transfers are intentionally limited in size so that banks can still make their money on credit card payments etc.
Interac is a bank-owned monopoly, and merchants eat astronomical fees even though it's nominally "free" to send an email money transfer to your plumber.
The more you dig into the Canadian banking ecosystem, the more you realize how powerful it is and how much rent-seeking is really going on.
The amazing part is that they've convinced the average Canadian that this oligopoly is actually good for them. Marketing works!
Anyone working in the financial services space, however, understands that the reality is really much darker than people realize.
What is also true is that Canada has never had anything like the S&L scandal in the 90s or the 2008 US financial crisis where massive swaths of the working class lost much of their savings.
So sure, we have higher fees due to regulatory capture, but I'll take that trade to know that some unregulated finance bros aren't fucking around with my life savings.
Gas is more expensive too. Oh, and wages are stagnant (except for in tech), which is a real problem when inflation hits 5% (as it is now). Productivity growth has been basically non-existent for decades.
Can I connect all of this to the banking oligopoly? No, but it's symptomatic of the larger problem: that Canada is a very difficult country to do business in. Ham-handed government regulation in every part of the economy is a huge drag on economic growth.
How much does the average Canadian pay per month for their chequing account?
Where they really get you though is in service fees. If you overdraft or do any one of a myriad of options you can get hit with penalty fees. Basically you just have to treat the minimum balance as a hard zero.
Or until you buy something in USD. Foreign exchange fees in Canada are a multiple of what they are south of the border, and Canadian banks ruthlessly protect this business by refusing to bank money service businesses that compete with them.
Canadian banks are the most profitable in the world, and they're really good at making customers think they're not paying that much for the pleasure of feeding the oligopoly.