The idea of publicly owned grocery stores is having a moment.
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani first drew attention to the concept last year with his proposal to establish a network of city-owned grocery stores. In March, Toronto followed suit by approving a pilot project to create four city-run stores of its own. The NDP’s new leader Avi Lewis has gone further—promising a national network of publicly-owned outlets.
The motive behind these moves is not hard to understand. In early 2026, food inflation in Canada topped seven per cent—the highest rate of increase for G7 countries. Food bank usage is at record highs nationwide.
Meanwhile, the five grocery giants that dominate Canada’s market are universally loathed. Loblaw Chairman Galen Weston Jr. is one of Canada’s most hated men. Millions go hungry while the tycoons profit.
In this difficult environment, the notion of a public grocer that could slash prices has struck a chord. But will the concept as proposed by Mamdani, Lewis and others actually work?
Too far, or not far enough?
The talk of public ownership in the grocery sector has met with disapproval from the usual suspects.
Doug Ford called Toronto’s pilot “the craziest idea I’ve ever heard,” reminding the public that “socialism doesn’t work.” The National Post drew parallels between Lewis’ plan and the Soviet Union—arguing that the former was as doomed to failure as the latter.
In fact, the problem with both Toronto’s and Lewis’ proposals aren’t that they go too far—but that they don’t go far enough.
Neither one (nor Mamdani) has suggested eliminating any portion of the private grocery sector—let alone wanting to emulate the Soviet Union. Instead, Lewis and others have proposed creating a modest network of public stores that would compete with the grocery giants and offer better discounts on food.
However positive this idea might be, its actual implementation will be fraught with difficulties.
The first problem is start-up cost. Building even a small network of stores will not be cheap. Lewis estimates that his plan to create 50 “warehouse-style” stores will cost $350 million to set up. However, that price tag may prove an underestimate when factors like the cost of acquiring land and development by the private sector are finally tallied up—an outcome that anyone familiar with the history of “public-private partnerships” knows too well.
The next issue is purchasing power. In a capitalist market, the more locations that you have, the greater your discount on food from suppliers—allowing you to either reduce your prices, or increase your profit margins.
Lewis’ proposal for 50 stores pales in comparison with Canada’s largest grocers—each with over 1,000 locations. The plans for NYC and Toronto are more modest still. This means significantly higher wholesale prices for the public grocery outlets when compared to the big corporate players.
The elimination of profit might leave public grocers some wiggle room. However, while overall profits in the grocery sector are no doubt outrageous, their margins are actually lower than that of other sectors.
In recent years, Canada’s big grocers averaged three to four per cent in profit. If this were eliminated, it could hypothetically translate into a few hundred dollars in annual savings for shoppers—not insignificant, but a far cry from the almost $10,000 spent by the average Canadian household. However, even this modest cost saving would likely be cancelled out by the reduced purchasing power of the public grocers.
In this model, public grocers could only be sustained through regular state subsidies. Lewis estimates the subsidy for his plan at $300 million annually—though this may well be higher in practice. With over 5,000 supermarkets belonging just to the big five in Canada, this money would be supporting less than one per cent of the total consumer market measured by store number—and that’s also assuming all 50 stores get built.
Of course, $300 million or more spent on public grocery stores is better than the same amount spent on corporate handouts or the military. But there are other measures which can more dramatically reduce the price of groceries for everyone—and at no cost to the ordinary taxpayer.
Go big or go home
The problem with most proposals for public grocers is that they are too modest in scale. This creates unnecessary duplication of resources, increased costs, and a much longer time scale to get things going.
In January, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a report on the feasibility of public grocery stores. Its conclusion: “scale matters”—the larger the network, the better the cost savings.
The report cited the U.S. Commissary, a state grocer designed to serve U.S. troops and veterans—with a 23.7 per cent discount on average. Lewis also cites the U.S. system in his program.
However, the U.S. Commissary is made up of 235 locations worldwide and has the buying power of the U.S. government behind it—very different from what Lewis and others are proposing. Even then it receives a modest subsidy.
In fact, the infrastructure for a public grocer on this scale (and much larger) already exists in Canada—the networks belonging to Loblaw, Sobeys, Metro, Wal-Mart and Costco. The problem is that we don’t own it.
The better solution isn’t to build new stores—but to take control of what already exists.
The nationalization of the grocery giants would create a public network with an unmatched purchasing power that could translate into immediate price reductions at the store—without the need for state support. The elimination of profits would lower prices further still. Moreover, a public grocer on this scale could guarantee good union jobs for workers across the entire sector, instead of just those lucky enough to land a gig at a city-run store.
And why stop there? Monopolies dominate almost every level of Canada’s food system. Just two multinationals—Cargill and JBS—control as much as 99 per cent of the country’s beef packing industry (and how about the price of beef lately?). Further, the profit margins of large food producers are typically higher than at retail outlets.
The big grocers have already shown how integration between food retail and production can help to lower costs and boost profits, such as with President’s Choice and No Name branded products. Taking over the large food producers and integrating them into a single public system would achieve the same on a grander scale—with the full savings passed on to the customer.
The efficient planning of Canada’s food system is hardly unrealistic. In fact, planning already happens inside all of the big monopolies. The big grocers sometimes even “plan” (or collude) with each other to fix prices, as they did with bread from 2001 to 2015. The problem is that it’s planned in their interests—not in ours.
The infrastructure needed to feed Canada’s population at a reasonable cost is there for the taking. However, it can’t be controlled by fiddling at the margins of capitalism—but by mobilizing workers to take command.
