A food economist’s case against public grocery stores

Food affordability remains a priority for many Canadians. This week, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government unveiled the spring economic update . It included some already announced measures aimed to make groceries more affordable. But some people are considering others measures to make food cheaper: public grocery stores. Federal NDP leader, Avi Lewis, has been talking about establishing a network of public grocery stores across Canada and municipalities like Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver are also considering the concept. Mike von Massow is a food economist at the University of Guelph. He joins us today to stress-test the concept of public grocery stores and whether they could make food more affordable in Canada. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at thedecibel@globeandmail.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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A food economist’s case against public grocery stores is an episode from The Decibel by The Globe and Mail.

This episode is 00:19:43 long.

This episode was published on May 1, 2026.

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