Why Canada needs public grocery stores

Great reporting as always!

Offering viable and sustainable choices!

I love this idea – how do we start?

While awaiting moderation, I have added some more information. I will send it to you now: Dear Breach Team,
I’m writing to share a crucial historical case study from Quebec that directly informs your work on public grocery stores and food price control.
I’m a counselling psychologist and community development specialist with over 50 years working on program strategy and institutional change. I’ve been an NDP candidate at both provincial and federal levels. I’m offering this because I believe Quebec’s own history contains lessons essential to getting public grocery models right.
The IGA Story: Why Market-Based Cooperation Failed
I’m not speaking about this as abstract history. My parents ran a small grocery store in Montreal throughout the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. My father, a highly skilled English butcher, managed the store with additional staff while my mother did the accounting every evening and on weekends—both of them finalizing the books and bookkeeping on Sundays. As a teenager, I was there: delivering grocery orders on my bicycle, stocking shelves, working the till, adding up items on the back of brown paper bags, and helping navigate orders from the newly created IGA.
I watched my parents live through what you’re trying to prevent.
In the 1950s, Quebec faced the exact problem you’re addressing: corporate consolidation squeezing out small independent grocers and driving up food prices. The response was the Independent Grocery Association (IGA)—a cooperative purchasing model designed to give small, family-run stores collective buying power to compete with the emerging chains like Steinberg’s and Dominion.
IGA worked at first. By pooling their orders, these mom-and-pop operations could negotiate better wholesale prices and survive. It was a genuine cooperative response to corporate consolidation. My family’s store benefited from it—the collective purchasing power made a real difference.
But here’s what happened: IGA’s structure created internal pressure for expansion. Stores adopting the IGA name could access better wholesale pricing, but only if they met certain standards. This incentivized growth. Simultaneously, the threat of large chain competitors opening nearby sparked a race to expand before being undercut. Some IGA stores that started as family enterprises grew into larger operations. Others, unable or unwilling to expand, either converted to depanneurs (convenience stores) or disappeared entirely.
Within decades, IGA itself had become a large conglomerate chain—the very thing it was created to resist. The small independent grocers, the backbone of the model, became extinct. What began as anti-monopoly cooperation transformed into another monopoly. Stores like my parents’—places where skilled tradespeople owned their own livelihoods—gradually vanished from Montreal’s neighborhoods.
Why This Matters for Public Grocery Models
The IGA story reveals a critical flaw in market-based cooperative solutions: without structural protections, even well-intentioned cooperative models can evolve into the monopolistic structures they oppose. The incentives embedded in the system—price competition, the threat of larger competitors, the pressure to scale—inevitably push toward consolidation.
This is why a public grocery model differs fundamentally from a cooperative one. A public system:
Removes the profit motive that drives expansion and consolidation
Prioritizes public benefit over individual store survival
Can maintain community-based retail without creating new monopolies
Protects small producers and local supply chains by design, not by market competition
Ensures stable pricing focused on affordability, not shareholder returns
What Quebec Needs to Understand
Quebecers remember IGA. They lived through the transformation of their neighbourhoods as family grocers disappeared. Many remember shopping at their local independent grocer before IGA consolidated them. This memory is an asset—not a reason to abandon cooperative models, but a reason to learn why cooperation alone wasn’t enough.
Quebec’s left has deep experience with successful public and cooperative models: Desjardins’ credit union system, agricultural cooperatives, worker cooperatives, public utilities. What distinguishes the successful ones from IGA is that they maintained structural independence and public accountability rather than allowing market logic to drive consolidation.
For Your Campaign
I’d suggest highlighting the IGA cautionary tale when speaking to Quebec audiences. It’s not anti-cooperation; it’s pro-public. It says: “We tried the cooperative model. It worked for a time. But market pressures turned it into another monopoly. A public grocery system learns from that history and builds in the protections cooperatives lack.”
This framing speaks directly to Quebec’s political culture—it honours the cooperative tradition while making a case for why public ownership is the next evolution.
I have additional analysis on how this history connects to Quebec’s broader experience with public institutions and could inform messaging specific to the province. Happy to discuss further if useful.
In solidarity,
Grendon Haines

Dear Shawn,

Thank you for your critique—these are legitimate concerns that deserve serious answers. Let me address them from both my direct experience and what I’ve observed about successful public models.

On the “all public grocers have failed” claim:

This actually isn’t accurate historically. It is my understanding (correct me if I am wrong) Saskatchewan’s consumer co-ops operated successfully for decades as quasi-public enterprises. The military commissary system you mention isn’t “meaningless”—it demonstrates that non-profit grocery retail can function at scale when properly structured. And internationally, there are successful models worth examining rather than dismissing. One mayoral candidate of New York city has included the idea as part of his campaign, although he has not been endorsed by the Democratic minority leaders in the House and Senate,

But you’re right that some attempts have failed. The question is why—and whether those failures were inherent to public ownership or due to specific design flaws, underfunding, or political sabotage.

On supply chains and selection:

My parents ran an independent grocery in Montreal during the IGA transition. Supply chain management isn’t inherently more difficult for public operators than for private ones—it’s about infrastructure, relationships with distributors, and professional management. The “empty shelves” problem you describe is usually a symptom of inadequate capitalization or political interference, not public ownership itself.

Regarding selection: you’re absolutely right that public stores would likely carry simplified inventories focused on staples and essentials. That’s actually the point. The issue isn’t replicating every SKU at Loblaws—it’s ensuring affordable access to nutritious food. The 47 varieties of potato chips aren’t what people struggling with food costs need.

On subsidies and tax burden:

This is where the analysis gets interesting. You’re correct that public grocers would require upfront investment and ongoing support. But let’s be clear about what we’re comparing:

Currently, Canadians subsidize corporate grocery consolidation through:

Billions in tax breaks and deferrals to large chains
Infrastructure costs (roads, utilities) that support their distribution networks
Healthcare costs from food insecurity and poor nutrition
Social assistance programs necessitated by low wages these chains pay
We’re already subsidizing the grocery system—we’re just doing it in ways that enrich shareholders rather than reduce food costs. The question isn’t “subsidies vs. no subsidies.” It’s “whose interests do public investments serve?”

Your point about razor-thin margins on staples is precisely why a public model makes sense. If margins are thin, why do we need a profit-extracting layer at all? Remove that layer, and even small savings compound for families spending hundreds monthly on groceries.

On theft and “bad neighbourhoods”:

This framing troubles me. When you describe US attempts in “bad neighbourhoods” with “massive theft issues,” you’re describing failure modes of poverty and social abandonment—not inherent flaws in public grocery models. Communities experiencing severe economic distress will have challenges regardless of who owns the store.

The solution isn’t abandoning those communities to food deserts. It’s addressing root causes: adequate social support, living wages, community investment. A properly resourced public grocery could be part of that solution, not isolated from it.

On direct food assistance instead:

I actually agree that targeted food programs for low-income people are essential. But this isn’t either/or. Public grocers and food assistance programs serve different functions:

Food assistance addresses immediate crisis
Public grocers create systemic downward pressure on food prices for everyone, while providing living-wage jobs and keeping wealth in communities
The real comparison should be: “public grocers + food assistance” vs. “corporate consolidation + food assistance.” Which better serves the public interest long-term?

What I’d suggest:

Rather than dismissing the idea based on past attempts, let’s ask: What would it take to design a public grocery model that addresses your legitimate concerns? Adequate capitalization? Professional management? Clear metrics for success? Community governance structures? Integration with local food systems?

The IGA story I shared shows that market-based cooperative solutions also failed—they became the monopolies they opposed. If neither pure market solutions nor past public attempts worked perfectly, maybe the answer is designing better public models informed by those failures, rather than defaulting back to corporate consolidation.