Public grocery stores unlikely to bring down food prices, say experts

OTTAWA — NDP leadership candidate Avi Lewis is promising to lower grocery bills across the country by bringing in a national “public option” to compete with corporate supermarket chains, but economists say this could be a hard row to hoe for a meagre yield.

“I think it would be profoundly expensive, and very difficult to make succeed, for a relatively marginal benefit for Canadians,” said Mike von Massow, a professor of food, agriculture and resource economics at the University of Guelph.

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“If you wanted to provide food support for low-income or underserved Canadians, (there are) much more cost-effective ways of doing that,” said von Massow.

Lewis said in a recent interview that the federal government has the capacity to buy food directly from distributors and the