Juno News - March 31, 2026


NDP leader Avi Lewis pushes STATE-RUN grocery stores

Topics
government-owned grocery stores government-run grocery stores
Mentioned
Avi Lewis Gary Jagmeet Singh Mark Carney Kraft Heinz Blah Blahs Barron Gale Chow
Who is the NDP’s newest leader, Avi Lewis？ The sad spectacle of the Juno Awards

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

150.4

Word count

3,205

Sentence count

104

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The push for government-owned and operated grocery stores has gone national in Canada, with newly minted NDP leader Avi Lewis saying he likes the idea. After winning the party leadership race on the weekend, Lewis suggested government-run grocery stores could be rolled out nationally if he becomes Prime Minister, not just in Toronto.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Well, the push for government-owned and operated grocery stores has gone national in Canada,
00:00:09 with newly minted NDP leader Avi Lewis saying he likes the idea.
00:00:14 Toronto City Council has approved a pilot project for four municipally-owned and operated grocery stores.
00:00:22 After winning the NDP leadership race on the weekend,
00:00:25 Lewis suggested government-run grocery stores could be rolled out nationally if he becomes
00:00:31 prime minister, not just grocery stores. He says internet providers and housing construction should
00:00:37 all have a public option. Our NDP has a different offer for this country. Our plan is to Trump-proof
00:00:44 the economy by investing massively in Canadian economic independence, using the unmatched power
00:00:51 of public ownership to ensure the fundamentals of a good life, a network of public providers
00:01:01 for food, phones, and internet, a public housing developer and public construction companies
00:01:11 to build millions of non-market homes, a 21st century electrical grid, an EV bus revolution,
00:01:20 and a heat pump in every home
00:01:22 built with Canadian steel
00:01:24 creating tens of thousands
00:01:26 of unionized jobs.
00:01:30 Like his predecessor, Jagmeet Singh,
00:01:32 Louis attacked the large chains,
00:01:34 the grocery chains like Blah Blahs 1.00
00:01:36 for price gouging
00:01:37 and putting profits ahead of consumers.
00:01:40 We can already hear the howls
00:01:41 from the establishment,
00:01:43 but how will you pay for all this?
00:01:46 Well, let's remind them
00:01:48 that this country is awash in wealth. We can have nice things. Banks made $70 billion in
00:01:58 profits last year alone. Oil companies are expecting a new windfall in the tens of billions.
00:02:05 Grocery, Barron, Gale and Weston alone is worth $20 billion. It is time, far past time,
00:02:15 to properly tax the corporations and billionaires that have been riding a tidal wave of profits
00:02:21 while the 99 have been suffering and struggling and use that money to directly improve the lives
00:02:29 of canadians the money is there now lewis also reposted this video on x which attacks big
00:02:37 retailers as guilty once again of price fixing and extortion 80 of all food retail is controlled by
00:02:45 just five corporations that's an oligopoly they fix prices they price gouge under the cover of 0.65
00:02:53 inflation and in remote areas they engage in full-scale extortion now lewis won the ndp
00:03:01 leadership on the weekend on the very first ballot promising to restore the party which
00:03:05 has been reduced to just six seats prime minister carney meantime went from being applauded on the
00:03:11 weekend of being heckled today at the Juno Awards on the weekend. The host of the awards show gushed
00:03:18 about Carney's speech at Davos. I do have to say, though, that when I saw Mark Carney's speech
00:03:23 at Davos, did you see that? I felt a childlike pride. I felt like he was Canada's dad sticking
00:03:31 up to the bullies. I was like, that's my prime minister. And then I saw him posing with the
00:03:36 of heated rivalry and just my nerve my nervous system just relaxed quite a difference today
00:03:45 with carney being heckled during this announcement in toronto let's listen and last week and this is
00:03:51 directly relevant to today's announcement we tabled legislation which will unlock 1.7 billion
00:03:59 dollars in federal funds to help provinces and territories lower the cost of home building
00:04:04 minister robertson and i want to work with our partners to optimize the funding to increase
00:04:12 housing supply and i'm very pleased to see premier fords our guest today is gary sands
00:04:19 senior vp of policy and advocacy for the canadian federation of independent grocers welcome gary
00:04:25 glad to be here thanks for having me well we've heard proposals now actually more than just
00:04:30 proposers i mean uh toronto city council has approved a pilot project for grocery stores
00:04:36 government operated owned and operated and now we have abby lewis the new leader of the ndp saying
00:04:43 this is such a great plan we should roll it out nationally what do you think i think it's a case
00:04:49 of they don't know what they don't know um uh you know i i think uh governments should stick to what
00:04:57 governments should be doing what people have voted and elected them uh to do but uh in the
00:05:04 in the grocery industry i think what they're doing is they're they're pandering to people
00:05:11 who are looking for uh some sort of magic bullet solution to you know the rising price of food
00:05:18 which is a global issue and there just is no simple magic bullet solution to it if there was
00:05:26 i'm sure there'd be a host of countries ahead of canada and the city of toronto implementing those
00:05:33 magic solutions but you know for independent grocers we know what's involved in starting up
00:05:39 a grocery store and the challenges and let me tell you there's a lot of expertise needed
00:05:45 you need to have a very entrenched deep relationships embedded in the supply chain
00:05:52 and uh there's overall for an independent grocery in canada your margin is overall about two percent
00:06:01 and that's not a figure i've pulled out of the air by the way that's stats can
00:06:05 um so i think it goes up to about three or four percent for the chains grocery is a very high
00:06:11 volume low margin business very very narrow margins um and the cost of getting your product
00:06:18 it's usually about 70 to 80 percent of your cost just before just getting the product in the door
00:06:26 and that depends on what the product is where it's coming from how it's been shipped and sent
00:06:33 and those challenges are even becoming more acute and the other thing i would say is how it's more
00:06:41 like a question how does the city of toronto or or mr lewis think that having a government run
00:06:48 grocery store going to insulate them from some of these global pressures we're facing,
00:06:53 whether it's the war in Ukraine, whether it's wildfires or droughts, whether it's what's
00:07:01 happening right now in the Mideast with rising fuel prices. Somebody's going to pay. So if you're
00:07:10 going to run these grocery stores in any way similar to the way an independent grocery store
00:07:15 has to operate, I can tell you that there's a loud sound of a sucking noise, and that's taxpayers
00:07:22 money going towards these grocery stores. And I think it's incumbent upon the city or anyone else
00:07:30 who's talking or implementing a government-run grocery store, let's be completely transparent
00:07:36 here. Let's make sure that on a monthly basis, you're showing the taxpayers how much these stores
00:07:43 are costing to operate. I think that would be very illuminating for for taxpayers.
00:07:50 Now you represent independents, so we're not talking about, I guess we're talking about 20%
00:07:57 that are not affiliated with the big boys, the Loblaws of the world and Costco's and the rest
00:08:04 of them, correct? That's right. There's about 6,900 independent grocers in Canada. Actually,
00:08:10 here in ontario uh 59 of the brick and mortar stores in ontario uh are independents now that
00:08:18 doesn't translate into buying power by any means but there there's a lot of them and uh many of
00:08:24 them are in rural and remote communities as well whether it's just it's not uh the community's not
00:08:30 big enough to support a chain i'm not you know criticizing the chains in that case because
00:08:35 they're simply not able to support that kind of a operation right i mean mr lewis's
00:08:45 complaint really is not with the independence so much as i understand
00:08:49 based on his comment it's more against big boys you know five who have according to him and others
00:08:57 control 80 of the market and the accusation here uh and there is some truth to the fixing the price
00:09:06 fixing charge but he says that you know the consumers are behind the eight ball because of
00:09:13 course you've got these big boys fixing prices and uh basically just out completely profits
00:09:22 and even according to extortion, according to some.
00:09:28 So what do you make of that?
00:09:30 Well, I want to make it very, very clear.
00:09:34 Like I said, I represent Main Street grocers,
00:09:36 not Bay Street grocers.
00:09:40 And Canada does have an overly consolidated
00:09:45 retail grocery industry.
00:09:46 Canada has allowed that to happen.
00:09:49 Successive governments of different party stripes
00:09:51 allowed that to happen even again here in ontario um where you know the majority of stores are
00:09:58 independents but the two biggest wholesalers are sobeys and loblaws so if you're an independent
00:10:03 in many areas of the province you're buying from your retail competitor that kind of situation
00:10:09 should not have allowed been allowed to occur but putting that to one side i have to take issue with
00:10:16 the um this this the accusations really about food profiteering gout price gouging everything
00:10:25 uh again i hope your listeners believe me when i say uh we represent the independence we've got
00:10:31 lots of issues with the chains but we are seeing the same uh cost increase from our suppliers
00:10:38 that the chains are seeing there's a myriad of them and we don't point our fingers at the suppliers
00:10:43 It would be very easy for me to come on and point my fingers at the big companies, Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, but we don't do that here with the independents because we know what's driving up their costs.
00:10:59 And the allegations about, as I said, profiteering and price gouging, a lot of that has to do with the fact that the retailer is the last point of contact in the supply chain for the consumer.
00:11:11 So you sold it to me, you must be responsible. And people are forgetting just how many points of contact there are before that. And this has been looked at by the Competition Bureau of Canada in 2023. They did a retail market study of the industry.
00:11:30 The all party, including the NDP, House of Commons Agriculture and Agri-Food Committee also looked at this issue.
00:11:38 And Sylvain Charlebois, world-renowned Agri-Food Institute out of Dalhousie University.
00:11:44 All three, looking at the evidence and the actual facts, all concluded there's absolutely no evidence of price gouging or extortion or anything along those lines.
00:11:58 it's just it's just not it's just not accurate so uh but i i i recognize you know because
00:12:06 consumers are so concerned about prices and rightly so we're all feeling that pinch but a lot
00:12:13 of times i think it just comes down to the fact that the retailers the last point of contact in
00:12:18 that supply chain so they become the focal point of attention for the consumer and if you're an
00:12:24 independent grocer i would ask anyone who's listening if if you were an independent grocer
00:12:30 and your margin's two percent that's that's to keep your lights on and and and do everything
00:12:36 you want to do and you get a price increase from your suppliers that's double digit what do you do
00:12:42 do you if you don't pass that on you're not going to be an independent grocer you're going to be an
00:12:49 out of business grocer that's that's just that's just the the facts of the business and that's
00:12:54 what any government run grocery store is going to be hit with the exact same set of circumstances
00:13:02 somewhere the money's going to have to come to make that up some of your members that end up
00:13:10 going broke if they have to compete against government-run stores right because whatever
00:13:15 government runs it's always at a loss yeah that would be i would i would like to think that that
00:13:22 would be an unintended consequence of of what they're proposing but that that is what you know
00:13:30 they you know if if governments were going to come in and subsidize grocery stores um and they're not
00:13:38 going to subsidize independent grocery stores yeah that puts them out of business and right off the
00:13:42 top i noticed the city of toronto was saying even before they thought about uh where they would open
00:13:47 them or or what the size of the store was we're going to waive all the property taxes any
00:13:52 development charges anything else we're going to wave right off the top i'll tell you something
00:13:57 it would be really great to hear the city and other governments talking about reducing those
00:14:03 kind of charges if they can do it for their own stores why not do it for the independent grocery
00:14:07 stores in canada and particularly in rural and remote areas i'd like to hear mr lewis put that
00:14:14 forward as a proposal because the cost of getting food to rural and remote communities in canada
00:14:20 is very high and it's more significant than in urban areas so the cost of food is higher in
00:14:28 those areas why doesn't the government step in and lower you know property taxes and fees and
00:14:34 anything else that you can for those independents in those areas and your members unfairly got hurt
00:14:41 during the pandemic didn't they and that probably cost some businesses you know their ability to
00:14:47 continue. We saw certainly in Ontario and other provinces where there was this decision made from
00:14:54 on high at the government level that you could shop at a Costco, but you couldn't at a small
00:15:00 grocery store or a convenience store. I mean, that must have hurt a lot of your members, which
00:15:06 really probably only served to consolidate more of the market in the hands of the very few. Is
00:15:12 that a fair statement? Well, in some respects, there were issues that arose during COVID that
00:15:20 did hurt small businesses. Like one that's invisible to the consumer is there was a huge
00:15:25 migration away from cash to contactless payments, if you will. That costs small businesses in Canada
00:15:35 billions of dollars. And that shift has never really gone back to what it was before. So
00:15:41 So I think, to be fair, there were other areas of other small businesses that were hit even more.
00:15:49 But in the grocery sector, that was the biggest hit was actually the change in payment systems and the protocols and whatnot that we had to put in place to deal with COVID.
00:16:03 Those are costs that were never recovered because they weren't offset by government.
00:16:07 Do you intend to have a chat, maybe to reach out for your lobbying efforts to Mr. Lewis
00:16:15 or perhaps Mayor Chow, maybe you've already done that, and try to explain the dynamics
00:16:21 of doing business in Canada these days, not only in Canada but elsewhere, the margins
00:16:25 that you have to deal with, and the fact that costs have to be passed on to the consumers
00:16:31 because otherwise your members couldn't sustain their businesses.
00:16:35 you couldn't stay open because they'd be losing money and rent-run stores could end up hurting
00:16:42 because it'll kill competition not amongst the big boys probably but amongst the smaller outlets the
00:16:48 independent business that's one of the things you're absolutely right that we want to convey
00:16:53 to them because once those independents are gone they're gone they're not coming back um so you 0.99
00:17:01 You know, government has to be very careful, and I use government in the broadest sense of the word, whether it's municipal, provincial, or federal.
00:17:09 They need to do their due diligence on this.
00:17:12 They need to, really, before they commit the taxpayers to subsidizing this kind of operation, they need to find out what's involved.
00:17:23 What are the margins?
00:17:24 Where would we get our, what do we have to do to get entrenched in the supply chain?
00:17:29 Who are going to be our suppliers?
00:17:31 there's just so many things that they're going to have to drill down on and find out about.
00:17:37 And who's going to operate these stores?
00:17:39 Because I find it always interesting that the people who come forward,
00:17:44 the politicians who come forward and propose these ideas,
00:17:47 have never owned or operated or worked in a grocery store.
00:17:52 And I find that fascinating.
00:17:55 Yeah, I mean, from what I understand and listening to you, Gary,
00:18:00 the idea of bringing in these government stores supposedly to target the big boys
00:18:05 will end up killing the independents. The big guys, because they have so much money,
00:18:12 they could probably weather the storm. But I think many of your members might not be able to.
00:18:19 And so maybe that's what I would point out.
00:18:22 Yeah, I think you're right. And we have to, like I said, I don't think that they have
00:18:34 correctly understood how much money they would have to sink in on an ongoing basis, never
00:18:41 mind the initial startup costs, but an ongoing basis to make these stores be able to run.
00:18:48 And I think they owe it to the taxpayers to say how much that would be.
00:18:51 And yes, they have to be sensitive to the fact that they could be putting small business
00:18:56 independent grocers out of business.
00:18:58 Then what?
00:19:00 Then, you know, what are you doing?
00:19:02 I mean, and I guess now we have to start asking the questions when government starts to, you
00:19:07 know, wade into aisle five, what's next?
00:19:10 Are we going to see the government's proposed, you know, fuel prices are going through the
00:19:14 roof.
00:19:14 We're going to have government run gas stations.
00:19:17 Why not?
00:19:18 What's the difference?
00:19:20 And they say that it's going to be local produce in many cases.
00:19:23 But, you know, what happens when the farmers start asking for more money because their costs go up?
00:19:29 You know, then what?
00:19:29 Do you take over?
00:19:30 Do you subsidize the farms?
00:19:32 You know, have government run food production?
00:19:35 I mean, it's just it never ends.
00:19:38 No.
00:19:38 And that's betraying their lack of understanding of the supply chain.
00:19:42 I mean, that's why I said at the beginning, we always are careful not to point fingers at others.
00:19:48 because we know what is being involved.
00:19:52 Even for farmers, when fuel goes up,
00:19:55 when feed costs go up, when fertilizer costs go up,
00:19:58 we know their costs are gonna go up,
00:20:00 but we also know what's coming.
00:20:02 They're gonna be passing,
00:20:03 the producers will pass those costs onto their processors,
00:20:07 and the processors will pass those costs onto the retailers.
00:20:10 And the retailers, for the independent grocer,
00:20:14 they have to pass those onto the consumer.
00:20:16 They have a choice.
00:20:18 they they either pass them on or they are they're not in business yeah absolutely how do people find
00:20:24 out more about the organization that you represent the canadian federation of independent grocers
00:20:31 uh go on our website i um and and there's lots of information uh uh about us as i said we've been
00:20:40 been around since 1962, and there are about, as I said, 6,900 independents in Canada, and
00:20:47 the majority of whom, as I said, in Ontario are independents. So we welcome people, you
00:20:55 know, finding out more about the independents, not just on a national basis, but in their
00:20:59 own community. Thank you so much for coming on the show,
00:21:02 Gary. Appreciate it. If you enjoyed this show, consider
00:21:05 supporting great independent journalism by becoming a premier member of Juneau News
00:21:10 Go to junonews.com backslash straight up.
00:21:13 You can find the link below.
00:21:15 It helps us do what we do.
00:21:17 We'll see you next time.