New NDP leader says he has a better plan for grocery stores
Co-op, GN representatives aren’t convinced it could work in the North
Federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis celebrates during the party’s leadership at a convention in Winnipeg on March 29. (Photo courtesy of Aaron Zerfas)
Warehouse-style non-profit publicly owned grocery stores could save Arctic shoppers up to 45 per cent at the checkout, says Curtis Mesher, president of Nunavut’s NDP riding association.
It’s an idea new NDP Leader Avi Lewis championed during his bid to head the federal political party. He won that vote on March 29.
“This goes to the heart of the issue of food insecurity,” said Mesher, an Iqaluit lawyer, in an interview Wednesday about the idea to create “public options” to reduce costs Canadians face.
“It is a wonderful approach to a situation that we know is very difficult.”
Mesher met with Lewis to discuss the public grocery store plan during the party’s convention in Winnipeg at the end of March
The idea is to establish 50 government-run grocery stores across Canada, including in the Arctic.
“Think Costco — but run as a public service,” Lewis repeated on the campaign trail.
The stores would be supplied by up to seven regional hubs, a couple of which might serve the three territories, Mesher said.
The budget would be $300 million to implement and the same amount would be needed each year to maintain it.
The stores would offer up to 2,000 products, mostly staples at a savings of up to 40 per cent in the south and up to 45 per cent in the Arctic, Mesher said.
Mesher points to similar state-run grocery chains in Mexico and Greenland as evidence the program can work.
“This is not a reinventing of the wheel. It’s simply saying, ‘Hey, have you thought about putting wheels on?’” Mesher said. “We’re learning from places that already have this in place.”
The NDP vision would establish a high-volume, warehouse-style model with subsidized rent and utilities backed by the regional food hubs.
An NDP government would work with provinces, municipalities, and co-ops to establish these public grocery stores across the country, Lewis said in his leadership platform.
Government-run grocery stores are also a hot political topic in the urban south, where both Toronto and New York City councillors are plotting their own pilot projects.
However, two Nunavut observers aren’t convinced it would work.
It’s a question of scale, said Duane Wilson, vice-president of stakeholder relations with Arctic Co-operatives Ltd., in a March 31 phone interview.
There are more than 20,000 Co-op memberships held by Nunavummiut, including some owned by large family households.
Co-op grocery stores operate in all Nunavut communities except Clyde River and Arviat. Arctic Ventures Co-op in Iqaluit is collectively owned by the other Arctic co-ops.
The stores themselves are part of a larger network of co-operatives with $12 billion in wholesale buying power, Wilson said.
“That’s where they achieve scale,” he said. “[Government] would not be able to have the scale that even existing operators do.”
Wilson said that the idea could be especially problematic in an Arctic context.
“I don’t know whether government, historically, has the best track record of running business enterprises with the goal of lowering costs,” he said.
Also, he points out, co-ops are already publicly owned. In all Arctic Co-op stores except Iqaluit, which is owned by the other co-op stores, members can become shareholders and receive dividends.
The Government of Nunavut is also cold to the idea of government-run grocers.
“Nunavut is an entirely different environment from large southern cities like Toronto and New York,” Department of Family Services spokesperson Ann Lehman-Allison said in a March 31 email.
Nunavummiut have their own food-related challenges that are different from most of the rest of Canada, she said.
Bad ideas spread like herpes and this is a doozy.
what is your idea instead of going with status quo of capitalism that is not working at all only for the rich 1% of the citizens.
Nutrition North Canada had a subsidy budget of $144.8 million in 2024-2025. The Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit tax credit system introduced by the current government is estimated to cost $11.7 billion to $12.4 billion over six years.
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Since NNC has been in place, the average cost of the Revised Northern Food Basket has risen well over $100 in most Nunavut communities, and well over $200 in most Nunavik communities! This so called inflation is not because it is unprofitable to sell food, it is because profiteers want even more profits than they get already – We pay more, we get less, and they get richer.
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NNC is roughly half as expensive as the proposed NDP plan, but nowhere near half as effective as the proposed plan which looks to save Canadians $600 million per year – with the biggest percentage of savings projected to be found among people living in the North, rather than down south.
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The Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit aims to save people and couples $400-800 dollars in a year… if you are financially eligible. That’s the best the current government can do for everyone, while costing taxpayers billions.
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This program goes to the heart of the cost of living crisis all Canadians are facing – A family could save between $2,500-10,000 annually, depending on where they live (people in the north can expect higher savings by avoiding the profiteering of the Northwest Company). This plan does not depend on income level thresholds like the CGEB, and it is not region locked like the NNC approach.
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This plan is for every Canadian, but will be especially beneficial to Inuit, and people across the North. Every Canadian can greater savings while we spend less than we already do to tackle food affordability.
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We can easily help every Canadian, through this program and others… it’s simply a matter of priorities.
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The NDP’s main priority is making life affordable and better for every Canadian.
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Contact the Nunavut NDP at nundpeda@gmail.com if you want to help make life better for everyone!
Your idea would make sense of Canada wasn’t a capitalist country. Northern and Calm Air have no competition in a market that is unsustainable and private corporation will always be a vulture they are and profit of poverty and desperation of people. Make Nunavut a socialist government as Inuit were in the past.
Inuit weren’t ‘socialist.’ It’s amazing how distorted ideas fill the void where knowledge and understanding are clearly vacant.
You never lived a traditional live style, here’s an example elders were taken care of, a first catch was shared, everyone had something eat, even it was poorest part of the animal and a person was was consider low within the society. Hunting groups cooperated, a customary practice called Niqaituqvik meaning share of the meat, is the Inuktitut term for income support or welfare. Can’t wait for your rebuttable!
Socialism is a modern term that might bear some similarities to hunter gather economies but is distinct in important ways.
Unlike a socialist state hunter gatherer societies were stateless and functioned without a central authority (we know this about Inuit societies specifically from the writings of early ethnographers),
In a socialist states the means of production and the redistribution of goods are controlled by a central authority.
Hunter gathered societies used a system of general reciprocity which depended on decentralized networks (opposite of a socialist system).
There are plenty of decentralized Socialists. Libertarian Socialists and Anarchists for example. As much as I disagree with socialism , socialists are not looking for a supreme leader, they want “the people” to lead.
Okay, so who are the ‘people’ in this? An amorphous hive mind, a party, cliche of some sort? This language obscures the reality that someone or group still leads and may even be authoritarian and oppressive.
The ‘people’ are the ones that own the means of production. The goal of socialists is to remove power from the elite and give it to the people. Not to create a different group of elite.
The fact it fails in practice is due to the failing of the ideology, not because it is intentional. In reality, Socialists are much worse than Social Conservatives when it comes to trying to control others and this very much attracts the type of people who shouldn’t be in control. That’s what you are talking about.
One of the sacred cows of Canadian life for decades has been our system of food production supply management.
This is particularly relevant for diary, egg, poultry and beef production in Canada.
This is the process by which quasi government bodies regulate the production of food in Canada with quotas, the collective negotiation for farmgate pricing by farmers, and limits to the importation of food products into our country.
The way in which food supply management is applied in Canada has lead to unfortunate results. The worst result being, if a particular region overproduces food without quota, perfectly good food ends up being dumped and wasted.
Our food supply management system has also mostly ignored the consolidation that has taken place on Canadian farms, at food processing facilities and at food wholesalers and retailers.
Consolidation has limited consumer choice and lead to the industry being able to heavily influence grocery prices.
Food supply management needs to be reformed in Canada. Our system needs to be made more competitive while also encouraging the dissolution of monopolies. This is a huge challenge for government to achieve, but would create great benefits. These reforms would truly lead to lower food prices for all Canadians.
The one northern example we have of this is the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation located in Winnipeg that often stood between Inuit Char fishers and their customers in the past.
The NDP will not champion these necessary reforms. Canadian farmers in particular will be very sensitive to change, and farmers are part of the NDP crumbling base.
Instead, their solution, as always, is more government.
Your comment is living out the fact that multi national grocery stores nation wide are making record profit while paying minimum wages to their unskilled workers!
Farmers are absolutely not part of the NDP base. The NDP are extremely unpopular in rural Canada.
Government run grocery stores are not new and actually work when supported by the gov’t properly. Example, Military commissaries for instance in the USA run nearly 25% cheaper than your average grocery chain. Its been done for decades.
Now, having the GN run something, well, that’s not your average gov’t. It is likely the most inefficient money void I have ever witnessed. The Onion skit from back in time “Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?” is what comes to mind every-time I think of the GN.
While I think the idea does work in some situations, anything involving the GN will almost always be more expensive, slow and inefficient and obviously yes gov’t buying power for grocery chains is lower here, again using the military example our CANEX is this tiny thing compared to the US military equivalent.
While I think the GN has its issues if it were to become an owner/operator, I don’t entirely reject the idea, creative thinking is needed at this point when it comes to the rising costs in the North. The most recent food survey was released and its clear we are paying 40-50% more (region pending) than Ottawa and that’s after subsidies that already exist.
That’s essentially all to say, I think the idea needs significant work, but appreciate at-least someone is looking into northern food costs. Unfortunately its a party that has no power….
And….. it’s not a party either. They lost official status in the last election. Mainly because of proposing extreme left ideas like this.
The NDP lost seats because Canada now has a crazy neighbor, such that the Canadian voting public decided to give more support to the LPC to respond accordingly.
Nope, this is not a one election anomaly.
After Mulcair, the NDP made a shift left and another shift level after Singh. As a result their last five elections went as follows:
67 seats
51
44
22
12
I see a pattern.
And if you stretch out the timeline, you can see that the party lost seats from a rightwing shift going from Layton to Mulcair.
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And even from 2008 onward, Layton took a more forceful and left wing lean than his predecessors which led to success: Layton won 37 seats in 2008(up 7), then 103 in 2011(up 67), then Mulcair swung right and got outflanked by Trudeau on the left and things dropped down.
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It’s simple to say that “going left=less success”, but if you expand the timeline you arbitrarily set at the NDP’s most rightwing leader, you see it’s not as simple as you make it out to be. The Liberals around that time got their success by swinging left and taking up the mantle of NDP promises like legalization, electoral reform and a different relationship with Indigenous peoples and Quebec. For a period of time, the broader electorate wanted left wing views and got them, inspired largely by positions held longer by the NDP suddenly taken up by the Liberals
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I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Liberals and Conservatives hate this idea for a few electoral cycles, until they finally take the idea from the NDP and try to implement a watered down version of it, it wouldn’t be the first time we see that in Canadian politics.
What an ironic name you gave yourself.
So you picked as a starting point, the 2011 election where the NDP achieved the highest level of popularity in the party’s history and the Liberals lead by the dud, Michael Ignatieff, had their worst showing in the nation’s history.
What a convenient place you picked to start. Which one of us is “cherry picking” exactly?
You are right about one thing, it’s not as simple as going left = less success. The Leap Manifesto was a watershed moment for the NDP that did a lot more than create turmoil within the party. The fossil fuel free Utopian dream, paid for by all the people who don’t vote NDP, is one of the most naive and tone deaf political ideologies of recent memory. Further, it exposed the NDP leadership as economic half wits, as even the simplest of people could recognize the holes in it. The party has been on a fast road to ruin ever since.
Your “pattern” does not dilute the fact we are now residing next door to a crazy neighbor and the Cdn voting public acted accordingly.
Just ask PP who was “projected to have an onslaught win” against the LPC, prior to our neighbor putting an imbecile in charge of their affairs.
Tell me again how our neighbors poor decision making had no impact on the vote results from the last Federal election.
Trump had no impact on the NDP results at all. The NDP were already down to 22 of the country’s 338 seats. They had already become completely irrelevant and a wasted vote. You can trace this downfall to the Leap Manifesto, which was a real eye opener for a lot of Canadians.
Would be , a seen out of the old U.S.S.R days , long lineup , empty shelves .
and how is capitalism solving poverty and over crowded housing condition?
Sounds like you are describing people going to Northmart
I want to Hear Northerns answer lol, but mister Wilson is wrong, makes it sound like dividends are a given thing, there not there based on profit that acl can control with creative accounting practices, or NTI can open a store and every time you enter the store they give you a $100 gift card I like that idea. CONTROL THE FREIGHT PRICES ON THE ALREADY SUBSIDIZED AIRLINES THEN YOU LEVEL THE FIELD AND SEE WHO IS RIPPING US OFF.
There is little to no savings for the general public when a private or publicly shared company is involved, they’re bottom line is and always will be “how much profit can i make”, doesn’t matter where you live.
It is the all mighty $$$$ , that makes , our loving caring world , go around !!
The Nunavut Trust is the settlement payment made by the Government of Canada for our modern treaty, the Nunavut Agreement.
The initial value of the Nunavut Trust was $1.1B.
The Nunavut Trust is managed by a Board of Trustees, that manage and invest this money for the benefit of Nunavut Inuit through a defined investment strategy.
Most of proceeds of the Nunavut Trust is used to fund the day to day operations of NTI and our RIAs.
The current value of the Nunavut Trust is around $2.5B, and the Nunavut Trust distributes around $100M a year to our Inuit Orgs.
As far as can be ascertained, the Nunavut Trust is an investor in the Northwest Company as part of the Canadian Investment Grade Fixed Income or Canadian Public Equity portion of its portfolio.
Unlike the popular public perception that Inuit are passively subject only to the personal costs that they have to incur living in the north, Inuit collectively participate in the ownership and the obtain the benefits of ownership of key northern businesses that affect their lives.
NDP= No Damn Plan
As Canada cuddles up with China. And Nunavut’s Grays Bay Road is cheered as a nation-building project for Canada. Or is it for China’s state-owned MMG Resources with its zinc, lead, and copper rights?
Nunavut is, if on fanfare programming cue, to bang the “oh wow excitement drums” for communist-style government-run grocery stores.
Imagine the joy having a limited selection, a limited supply, and food long time out of stock.
But, yahoo, it’ll be the cheapest made products for a cheap price. So keep the gas lighting imagery in mind as if it were a Costco, not Cuba.
But then, Cuba burst the government-run grocery store love-in bubble as they are increasing for-profit stores.
China is likely to have the largest economy in the world sometime between now and the next ten years. It’s great that we are developing closer relations with them, especially given the unpredictable, erratic nature of our former ally to the south.
Anyone else sick of eating Mr. Noodles?? We really should get some stock in the noodle market, I wonder how much of their Revenue comes from the North?
Trust me, lots of canadians have nothing they can afford but Mr Noodles. Thats the state the country is in.
I always thought the saying “Those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it” was too basic to be true. Not anymore.
In the 1950’s, the powers that be noticed that the evil Hudsons Bay Company had a retail monopoly in Northern Canada and were in a position to take advantage of indigenous peoples left without choice.
First Northern Affairs, and then the Territorial Government made it their business to use the taxes levied against the HBC to force competition.
They established a very generous suite of Cooperative support programs including open ended loans (most if not all written off) to encourage and help Inuit, first in Nunavik, establish locally owned stores to compete against the HBC.
This also included hiring dedicated government staff to assist Inuit in getting started, who even in some cases ended up running these enterprises on behalf of Inuit.
Untold millions in public funds during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s were spent establishing and propping up a growing network of Coop stores that is now ACL.
Flash forward to today, ACL and the Northwest Company are now cornerstones of the northern food distribution system that is yet again viewed by the public as being uncompetitive and gouging the northern consumer with high prices.
What was done in the past to solve this problem is in essence exactly the same as what the NDP is now proposing; spend public money to establish an alternative retailer.
When will it stop? When there are 5, 10, or 20 food retailers in the north, all spawned by the ever suffering taxpayer, all facing the same unaddressed costs to buy, transport, store, display and sell food to northerners for basically the same price?
No. It should be the time to address the fundamental constraints to selling reasonably priced nutritious food in remote parts of Canada. After all, Northern and Coop stores in communities are merely the tail end of a very long and tenuous supply chain.
That means investing in transportation links, and making our overall food production system more efficient.
It is not a good idea. If government-run, the stores would be mis-managed. One way to lower costs for certain nutritious products would be for Canada to get rid of supply management, which artificially inflates the cost of dairy and poultry products. But the federal government will never get serious about eliminating supply management because it makes Quebec dairy farmers extremely wealthy, and getting rid of it would cost votes. One comment says that that the Nunavut Trust probably owns shares in Northwest Company. I hope they do. Northwest Company is consistently profitable, and it is a place where long-term northern investments can be safely parked and collect dividends reliably. Another company in which Nunavut Trust should be invested (and maybe is) is Exchange Income Fund which owns Canadian North and a number of other airlines. Individual northerners with money to invest should also consider these two winners.
Lewis’s plan is just another example of the NDP promising big because they know they will never have to deliver because they will never be in power.
There should be vote for MP. Lori did not even told Inuit that she was going to move to another party. Speak up Inuit and show them how they have been working.
If you cannot release the plan now, there is no plan, giving yourself and the party a summer to device something.
Free Palestine signs at the New Democrats rally, excellent choice on behalf of the membership to continue with the support for the indigenous people of the Middle East. Ben Netanyahu and his party members are criminals and they should spend the rest of their days in prison.