Colby Cosh: Paging Avi Lewis — Canada’s communitarian grocer gets food inflation, too

The Co-op grocery store at 18370 Lessard Rd in Edmonton, Alta. Photo by Tom Braid/Edmonton Sun/QMI Agency

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Imagine, if you dare, a different Canada, a Canada where we’re not all hostage to the whims of a few for-profit grocery chains. Imagine a Canada that had cooperative non-profit alternatives, ones anchored in strong socialist and community ideals. A whole network, even, of purely local institutions owned by their customers and governed by member-elected boards. Any profits earned could go back directly to the members, with no overpaid executives devouring billion-dollar slices of the business. You could even have a digital account you could consult 24/7 to see how your investment was doing.

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Non-members, of course, would be welcome to shop at these stores: those shoppers wouldn’t have equity in the business, nor would they have the right to choose management and decide on operating principles, but the immense savings alone from the removal of the profit motive would surely attract non-members and keep the for-profit competitors honest….

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Canadian newspaper consumers are reading an increasing number of stories with this theme, but it is surely only the ones in Western Canada (and remote parts of northern Ontario) who are meeting them all with a horselaugh as they finish their morning coffee … and then drive off to the Co-Op to get groceries. My parents have memberships in the Lloydminster Co-Op. Lots of you are members of a Co-Op. And you’ll have noticed that Grocer Avi Lewis, the new leader of the NDP, appears to have no idea that there is such a thing as the Co-Op, or that such a thing could exist.

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In the West, Co-Ops are not some invisible niche alternative to the for-profit grocers. The historic Co-Op network, the Federated Co-operatives Ltd., has 275 affiliated stores in the four westernmost provinces, mostly on the prairies. The Calgary area’s Co-Op stores voted to leave the network in 2020 and go on their own; they account for a couple dozen more. All these stores conform to the description I gave in the first couple paragraphs of this column. They are, in fact, a historic living achievement of the Canadian socialist movement that Grocer Avi has inherited from his forebears like silverware.

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So why the preposterous, contrived blind spot? The Grocer’s advocacy for state-operated food stores has provoked skeptical reactions from economists and pundits who themselves don’t always seem to know the Co-Op exists. These people rightly observe that profit margins are microscopic for the for-profit groceries, and that the existence of a non-profit alternative wouldn’t, in theory, necessarily do much to reduce costs either for the paid-up members or other shoppers.