Juno News - NDP leader Avi Lewis pushes STATE-RUN grocery stores

00:00:00.000 Well, the push for government-owned and operated grocery stores has gone national in Canada,

00:00:09.620 with newly minted NDP leader Avi Lewis saying he likes the idea.

00:00:14.960 Toronto City Council has approved a pilot project for four municipally-owned and operated grocery stores.

00:00:22.140 After winning the NDP leadership race on the weekend,

00:00:25.020 Lewis suggested government-run grocery stores could be rolled out nationally if he becomes

00:00:31.220 prime minister, not just grocery stores. He says internet providers and housing construction should

00:00:37.320 all have a public option. Our NDP has a different offer for this country. Our plan is to Trump-proof

00:00:44.620 the economy by investing massively in Canadian economic independence, using the unmatched power

00:00:51.340 of public ownership to ensure the fundamentals of a good life, a network of public providers

00:01:01.620 for food, phones, and internet, a public housing developer and public construction companies

00:01:11.540 to build millions of non-market homes, a 21st century electrical grid, an EV bus revolution,

00:01:20.800 and a heat pump in every home

00:01:22.920 built with Canadian steel

00:01:24.840 creating tens of thousands

00:01:26.720 of unionized jobs.

00:01:30.260 Like his predecessor, Jagmeet Singh,

00:01:32.640 Louis attacked the large chains,

00:01:34.580 the grocery chains like Blah Blahs 1.00

00:01:36.080 for price gouging

00:01:37.380 and putting profits ahead of consumers.

00:01:40.440 We can already hear the howls

00:01:41.880 from the establishment,

00:01:43.240 but how will you pay for all this?

00:01:46.780 Well, let's remind them

00:01:48.340 that this country is awash in wealth. We can have nice things. Banks made $70 billion in

00:01:58.120 profits last year alone. Oil companies are expecting a new windfall in the tens of billions.

00:02:05.520 Grocery, Barron, Gale and Weston alone is worth $20 billion. It is time, far past time,

00:02:15.400 to properly tax the corporations and billionaires that have been riding a tidal wave of profits

00:02:21.880 while the 99 have been suffering and struggling and use that money to directly improve the lives

00:02:29.320 of canadians the money is there now lewis also reposted this video on x which attacks big

00:02:37.800 retailers as guilty once again of price fixing and extortion 80 of all food retail is controlled by

00:02:45.240 just five corporations that's an oligopoly they fix prices they price gouge under the cover of 0.65

00:02:53.080 inflation and in remote areas they engage in full-scale extortion now lewis won the ndp

00:03:01.080 leadership on the weekend on the very first ballot promising to restore the party which

00:03:05.960 has been reduced to just six seats prime minister carney meantime went from being applauded on the

00:03:11.400 weekend of being heckled today at the Juno Awards on the weekend. The host of the awards show gushed

00:03:18.120 about Carney's speech at Davos. I do have to say, though, that when I saw Mark Carney's speech

00:03:23.400 at Davos, did you see that? I felt a childlike pride. I felt like he was Canada's dad sticking

00:03:31.960 up to the bullies. I was like, that's my prime minister. And then I saw him posing with the

00:03:36.780 of heated rivalry and just my nerve my nervous system just relaxed quite a difference today

00:03:45.420 with carney being heckled during this announcement in toronto let's listen and last week and this is

00:03:51.740 directly relevant to today's announcement we tabled legislation which will unlock 1.7 billion

00:03:59.180 dollars in federal funds to help provinces and territories lower the cost of home building

00:04:04.660 minister robertson and i want to work with our partners to optimize the funding to increase

00:04:12.260 housing supply and i'm very pleased to see premier fords our guest today is gary sands

00:04:19.200 senior vp of policy and advocacy for the canadian federation of independent grocers welcome gary

00:04:25.620 glad to be here thanks for having me well we've heard proposals now actually more than just

00:04:30.760 proposers i mean uh toronto city council has approved a pilot project for grocery stores

00:04:36.840 government operated owned and operated and now we have abby lewis the new leader of the ndp saying

00:04:43.080 this is such a great plan we should roll it out nationally what do you think i think it's a case

00:04:49.880 of they don't know what they don't know um uh you know i i think uh governments should stick to what

00:04:57.640 governments should be doing what people have voted and elected them uh to do but uh in the

00:05:04.280 in the grocery industry i think what they're doing is they're they're pandering to people

00:05:11.160 who are looking for uh some sort of magic bullet solution to you know the rising price of food

00:05:18.840 which is a global issue and there just is no simple magic bullet solution to it if there was

00:05:26.440 i'm sure there'd be a host of countries ahead of canada and the city of toronto implementing those

00:05:33.160 magic solutions but you know for independent grocers we know what's involved in starting up

00:05:39.560 a grocery store and the challenges and let me tell you there's a lot of expertise needed

00:05:45.160 you need to have a very entrenched deep relationships embedded in the supply chain

00:05:52.840 and uh there's overall for an independent grocery in canada your margin is overall about two percent

00:06:01.160 and that's not a figure i've pulled out of the air by the way that's stats can

00:06:05.000 um so i think it goes up to about three or four percent for the chains grocery is a very high

00:06:11.160 volume low margin business very very narrow margins um and the cost of getting your product

00:06:18.440 it's usually about 70 to 80 percent of your cost just before just getting the product in the door

00:06:26.440 and that depends on what the product is where it's coming from how it's been shipped and sent

00:06:33.080 and those challenges are even becoming more acute and the other thing i would say is how it's more

00:06:41.160 like a question how does the city of toronto or or mr lewis think that having a government run

00:06:48.440 grocery store going to insulate them from some of these global pressures we're facing,

00:06:53.860 whether it's the war in Ukraine, whether it's wildfires or droughts, whether it's what's

00:07:01.600 happening right now in the Mideast with rising fuel prices. Somebody's going to pay. So if you're

00:07:10.540 going to run these grocery stores in any way similar to the way an independent grocery store

00:07:15.080 has to operate, I can tell you that there's a loud sound of a sucking noise, and that's taxpayers

00:07:22.500 money going towards these grocery stores. And I think it's incumbent upon the city or anyone else

00:07:30.300 who's talking or implementing a government-run grocery store, let's be completely transparent

00:07:36.280 here. Let's make sure that on a monthly basis, you're showing the taxpayers how much these stores

00:07:43.340 are costing to operate. I think that would be very illuminating for for taxpayers.

00:07:50.860 Now you represent independents, so we're not talking about, I guess we're talking about 20%

00:07:57.580 that are not affiliated with the big boys, the Loblaws of the world and Costco's and the rest

00:08:04.140 of them, correct? That's right. There's about 6,900 independent grocers in Canada. Actually,

00:08:10.460 here in ontario uh 59 of the brick and mortar stores in ontario uh are independents now that

00:08:18.300 doesn't translate into buying power by any means but there there's a lot of them and uh many of

00:08:24.620 them are in rural and remote communities as well whether it's just it's not uh the community's not

00:08:30.460 big enough to support a chain i'm not you know criticizing the chains in that case because

00:08:35.260 they're simply not able to support that kind of a operation right i mean mr lewis's

00:08:45.260 complaint really is not with the independence so much as i understand

00:08:49.100 based on his comment it's more against big boys you know five who have according to him and others

00:08:57.660 control 80 of the market and the accusation here uh and there is some truth to the fixing the price

00:09:06.780 fixing charge but he says that you know the consumers are behind the eight ball because of

00:09:13.580 course you've got these big boys fixing prices and uh basically just out completely profits

00:09:22.300 and even according to extortion, according to some.

00:09:28.140 So what do you make of that?

00:09:30.640 Well, I want to make it very, very clear.

00:09:34.220 Like I said, I represent Main Street grocers,

00:09:36.900 not Bay Street grocers.

00:09:40.000 And Canada does have an overly consolidated

00:09:45.080 retail grocery industry.

00:09:46.480 Canada has allowed that to happen.

00:09:49.020 Successive governments of different party stripes

00:09:51.440 allowed that to happen even again here in ontario um where you know the majority of stores are

00:09:58.160 independents but the two biggest wholesalers are sobeys and loblaws so if you're an independent

00:10:03.440 in many areas of the province you're buying from your retail competitor that kind of situation

00:10:09.280 should not have allowed been allowed to occur but putting that to one side i have to take issue with

00:10:16.640 the um this this the accusations really about food profiteering gout price gouging everything

00:10:25.120 uh again i hope your listeners believe me when i say uh we represent the independence we've got

00:10:31.680 lots of issues with the chains but we are seeing the same uh cost increase from our suppliers

00:10:38.560 that the chains are seeing there's a myriad of them and we don't point our fingers at the suppliers

00:10:43.360 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.

00:10:59.260 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.

00:11:11.620 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.

00:11:30.680 The all party, including the NDP, House of Commons Agriculture and Agri-Food Committee also looked at this issue.

00:11:38.440 And Sylvain Charlebois, world-renowned Agri-Food Institute out of Dalhousie University.

00:11:44.660 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.

00:11:58.080 it's just it's just not it's just not accurate so uh but i i i recognize you know because

00:12:06.540 consumers are so concerned about prices and rightly so we're all feeling that pinch but a lot

00:12:13.040 of times i think it just comes down to the fact that the retailers the last point of contact in

00:12:18.920 that supply chain so they become the focal point of attention for the consumer and if you're an

00:12:24.880 independent grocer i would ask anyone who's listening if if you were an independent grocer

00:12:30.720 and your margin's two percent that's that's to keep your lights on and and and do everything

00:12:36.440 you want to do and you get a price increase from your suppliers that's double digit what do you do

00:12:42.940 do you if you don't pass that on you're not going to be an independent grocer you're going to be an

00:12:49.280 out of business grocer that's that's just that's just the the facts of the business and that's

00:12:54.700 what any government run grocery store is going to be hit with the exact same set of circumstances

00:13:02.340 somewhere the money's going to have to come to make that up some of your members that end up

00:13:10.540 going broke if they have to compete against government-run stores right because whatever

00:13:15.540 government runs it's always at a loss yeah that would be i would i would like to think that that

00:13:22.640 would be an unintended consequence of of what they're proposing but that that is what you know

00:13:30.000 they you know if if governments were going to come in and subsidize grocery stores um and they're not

00:13:38.000 going to subsidize independent grocery stores yeah that puts them out of business and right off the

00:13:42.340 top i noticed the city of toronto was saying even before they thought about uh where they would open

00:13:47.480 them or or what the size of the store was we're going to waive all the property taxes any

00:13:52.320 development charges anything else we're going to wave right off the top i'll tell you something

00:13:57.040 it would be really great to hear the city and other governments talking about reducing those

00:14:03.140 kind of charges if they can do it for their own stores why not do it for the independent grocery

00:14:07.760 stores in canada and particularly in rural and remote areas i'd like to hear mr lewis put that

00:14:14.340 forward as a proposal because the cost of getting food to rural and remote communities in canada

00:14:20.920 is very high and it's more significant than in urban areas so the cost of food is higher in

00:14:28.000 those areas why doesn't the government step in and lower you know property taxes and fees and

00:14:34.360 anything else that you can for those independents in those areas and your members unfairly got hurt

00:14:41.520 during the pandemic didn't they and that probably cost some businesses you know their ability to

00:14:47.840 continue. We saw certainly in Ontario and other provinces where there was this decision made from

00:14:54.000 on high at the government level that you could shop at a Costco, but you couldn't at a small

00:15:00.680 grocery store or a convenience store. I mean, that must have hurt a lot of your members, which

00:15:06.720 really probably only served to consolidate more of the market in the hands of the very few. Is

00:15:12.760 that a fair statement? Well, in some respects, there were issues that arose during COVID that

00:15:20.200 did hurt small businesses. Like one that's invisible to the consumer is there was a huge

00:15:25.920 migration away from cash to contactless payments, if you will. That costs small businesses in Canada

00:15:35.800 billions of dollars. And that shift has never really gone back to what it was before. So

00:15:41.420 So I think, to be fair, there were other areas of other small businesses that were hit even more.

00:15:49.920 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.

00:16:03.540 Those are costs that were never recovered because they weren't offset by government.

00:16:07.220 Do you intend to have a chat, maybe to reach out for your lobbying efforts to Mr. Lewis

00:16:15.100 or perhaps Mayor Chow, maybe you've already done that, and try to explain the dynamics

00:16:21.000 of doing business in Canada these days, not only in Canada but elsewhere, the margins

00:16:25.440 that you have to deal with, and the fact that costs have to be passed on to the consumers

00:16:31.240 because otherwise your members couldn't sustain their businesses.

00:16:35.620 you couldn't stay open because they'd be losing money and rent-run stores could end up hurting

00:16:42.180 because it'll kill competition not amongst the big boys probably but amongst the smaller outlets the

00:16:48.660 independent business that's one of the things you're absolutely right that we want to convey

00:16:53.940 to them because once those independents are gone they're gone they're not coming back um so you 0.99

00:17:01.460 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.

00:17:09.020 They need to do their due diligence on this.

00:17:12.760 They need to, really, before they commit the taxpayers to subsidizing this kind of operation, they need to find out what's involved.

00:17:23.680 What are the margins?

00:17:24.820 Where would we get our, what do we have to do to get entrenched in the supply chain?

00:17:29.180 Who are going to be our suppliers?

00:17:31.460 there's just so many things that they're going to have to drill down on and find out about.

00:17:37.180 And who's going to operate these stores?

00:17:39.580 Because I find it always interesting that the people who come forward,

00:17:44.600 the politicians who come forward and propose these ideas,

00:17:47.740 have never owned or operated or worked in a grocery store.

00:17:52.000 And I find that fascinating.

00:17:55.180 Yeah, I mean, from what I understand and listening to you, Gary,

00:18:00.560 the idea of bringing in these government stores supposedly to target the big boys

00:18:05.120 will end up killing the independents. The big guys, because they have so much money,

00:18:12.880 they could probably weather the storm. But I think many of your members might not be able to.

00:18:19.200 And so maybe that's what I would point out.

00:18:22.480 Yeah, I think you're right. And we have to, like I said, I don't think that they have

00:18:34.420 correctly understood how much money they would have to sink in on an ongoing basis, never

00:18:41.460 mind the initial startup costs, but an ongoing basis to make these stores be able to run.

00:18:48.540 And I think they owe it to the taxpayers to say how much that would be.

00:18:51.660 And yes, they have to be sensitive to the fact that they could be putting small business

00:18:56.620 independent grocers out of business.

00:18:58.700 Then what?

00:19:00.220 Then, you know, what are you doing?

00:19:02.060 I mean, and I guess now we have to start asking the questions when government starts to, you

00:19:07.420 know, wade into aisle five, what's next?

00:19:10.360 Are we going to see the government's proposed, you know, fuel prices are going through the

00:19:14.380 roof.

00:19:14.780 We're going to have government run gas stations.

00:19:17.060 Why not?

00:19:18.540 What's the difference?

00:19:20.140 And they say that it's going to be local produce in many cases.

00:19:23.940 But, you know, what happens when the farmers start asking for more money because their costs go up?

00:19:29.160 You know, then what?

00:19:29.740 Do you take over?

00:19:30.640 Do you subsidize the farms?

00:19:32.480 You know, have government run food production?

00:19:35.440 I mean, it's just it never ends.

00:19:38.420 No.

00:19:38.780 And that's betraying their lack of understanding of the supply chain.

00:19:42.740 I mean, that's why I said at the beginning, we always are careful not to point fingers at others.

00:19:48.540 because we know what is being involved.

00:19:52.320 Even for farmers, when fuel goes up,

00:19:55.240 when feed costs go up, when fertilizer costs go up,

00:19:58.540 we know their costs are gonna go up,

00:20:00.400 but we also know what's coming.

00:20:02.580 They're gonna be passing,

00:20:03.800 the producers will pass those costs onto their processors,

00:20:07.180 and the processors will pass those costs onto the retailers.

00:20:10.640 And the retailers, for the independent grocer,

00:20:14.200 they have to pass those onto the consumer.

00:20:16.680 They have a choice.

00:20:18.240 they they either pass them on or they are they're not in business yeah absolutely how do people find

00:20:24.720 out more about the organization that you represent the canadian federation of independent grocers

00:20:31.920 uh go on our website i um and and there's lots of information uh uh about us as i said we've been

00:20:40.000 been around since 1962, and there are about, as I said, 6,900 independents in Canada, and

00:20:47.840 the majority of whom, as I said, in Ontario are independents. So we welcome people, you

00:20:55.560 know, finding out more about the independents, not just on a national basis, but in their

00:20:59.360 own community. Thank you so much for coming on the show,

00:21:02.340 Gary. Appreciate it. If you enjoyed this show, consider

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00:21:10.000 Go to junonews.com backslash straight up.

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00:21:17.780 We'll see you next time.

Juno News - March 31, 2026

NDP leader Avi Lewis pushes STATE-RUN grocery stores

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