BC should should compete with the other grocery chains to lower their prices. The first stores should be set up in First Nations communities as they often have the most expensive food.
Its tough out here on Vancouver Island seeing those high totals.
Access to food is a human right. The fact we have to rely on private corporations does not bode well for maintaining that right.
… and their solution to the housing crisis is to build more rental properties, so take an educated guess whose side they’re ultimately on.
Absolutely. Access to food can be thought of as a utility just as necessary as power, heating, healthcare, etc. And just like those industries, a public option or preferably full nationalization will deliver better results than private interests.
No, it should happen at the national level for buying power. It should include the full supply chain as exploited by current national and multinational grocers.
So I guess what I’m saying, is pick one and nationalize the whole damn thing. Weston/Loblaws would be my pick.
Everyone in a position to complain about loss of wealth or income as a result of nationalization has enough of either or both to just ignore.
Im not sure a crown corporation would be the most efficient. Not sure how to control for it though.price controls tied to wages perhaps?
Such as groceries can’t increase more than the amount that average wages increase?
And network provider. And many other things.
I feel like setting up a petition and contacting the ndp and the greens about this. It could serve only vegan products to reduce the environment impacts and the intial cost.
It could serve only vegan products
Say bye-bye to your market share.
Everything essential should not be in private hands. Food, water, shelter, transportation, education, and healthcare should all be provided at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayers by the government.
There is a lot more to how you buy food then the stores alone. There is the distribution network that brings food to the stores. Without those, you’re just buying food from the existing grocery stores (who own the distribution) — and will likely need to charge the same prices.
And the Province setting up their own distribution is never going to be able to have the purchasing power of a national grocery chain, and won’t come close to something like Walmart. Everything they buy (either imported or local) will be more expensive.
So the only way to make it cheap would be to subsidize the pricing — and if you’re going to do that, why bother duplicating all of the effort of stores and a distribution network? We can subsidize people in need directly for much cheaper than it would be to setup all of that infrastructure and then offer the same sort of subsidy (that, or you could spend the same amount of money to just subsidize those in need even more).
So… federally-run distribution in partnership with provincially-run supermarkets?
That would conceivably be better — but I still suspect the government and citizens of Canada would get better bang for their buck making deals with existing food distribution networks, instead of using billions of dollars building a new distribution network.
Canada’s problems are ones of affordability, and not of insufficient distribution capacity.
Yeah let’s subsidize food so that grocers can continue to increase prices and all those subsidies end up back in the pockets of the rich.
You mean like the roaring success that is BCFerries?
The issue with BC Ferries is that it’s run as a private company despite its only owner being the government. Worst of both worlds. They need to be under the Ministry of Transportation like the inland ferries.
The most obvious comparison would be BC Liquor Stores, which is doing pretty good in fact. But we’ll see how they’ll fare once we get alcohol selling on supermarkets… by the end of this century perhaps
Or perhaps like the envy-inducing low cost and high standards of service of ICBC.
Should? I don’t think so. Could? Certainly, I don’t see why not.
It’s not really the grocery stores causing the problems. Every step in the food chain is experiencing increased costs.
Controlling everything is not the right answer either. Especially when food is a global commodity.
No matter how much the government tried they simply can’t control the price of bananas or rice, we don’t produce enough for domestic consumption.
But when every step thinks they can use inflation as an excuse to add an extra bit of profit it adds up by the time it gets to you or me. And the big grocery stores often own several of the steps on their own.
So break the monopolies up and make them compete, that’s how capitalism is supposed to work.
Government should definitely be operating in some business areas, food isn’t one of them. They should regulate it, but it’s a relatively fluid market that allows people to shift easily between providers by simply looking up prices before shopping.
That’s a great idea and I’d agree that it’s a better and realistic option compared to a government run store.
No this is one area that the private sector can do. But: COMPETITION. We need competition in stores and middlemen like meat processors.
Gee, it’s almost like it was a bad idea to let Loblaws buy out most of the competition, have Walmart undercut them at razor or losing margins until they left, and then be stuck with few choices and even less good ones…
