Episode
A food economist’s case against public grocery stores
- Podcast
- The Decibel
- Published
- May 1, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1183
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/the-decibel/
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-decibel-3326560/episodes/a-food-economist-s-case-against-public-grocery-stores/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-decibel-3326560/a-food-economist-s-case-against-public-grocery-stores.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
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.