In March 2026, the Toronto city council approved a municipal grocery store pilot in four communities to address issues of food access and high food costs. The proposal is one of several recent responses to the growing push for “publicly owned and operated” grocery store alternatives.
Other notable examples include New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plans for five municipal grocery stores during his election campaign. The idea has since spread north: NDP Leader Avi Lewis proposed a national strategy to bring public grocery stores to communities across Canada.
Supporters view public grocery stores as a solution to high grocery prices and corporate profiteering. Corporate food retail also contributes to unhealthy food environments and to Canadians’ growing food insecurity.
Critics believe governments will be unable to deliver on public grocery stores. They argue that municipalities have minimal supply-chain connections and experience in the food retail sector. Critics also cite cost concerns, including thin margins and a lack of government buying power. They question is whether public stores can make food more affordable without large tax hikes for Canadians.
Debates over whether public grocery stores can turn a profit, however, miss the point. The more urgent question is: Why do so many Canadians need an alternative model to the grocery stores they already have?
Food as a public good
Canadians should consider that overly consolidated, corporate-controlled food systems are unstable.
Canada’s current food system lacks diversity, which makes it vulnerable to global supply chain disruptions. The mainstream system also enables a few food retail tycoons to achieve record-breaking profits, while Canadians experience growing food insecurity.
Discussions around the need for public alternatives should not focus solely on profit margins. We need to start thinking about food the way we think about roads or public transit — infrastructure that deserves public investment.
This shift will require Canadians to see food not simply as a commodity, but as a public good. Government-run stores are only part of the picture. There are already community-led alternatives across Canada worth paying attention to.
(Unsplash)
Community-led, locally rooted models
Canada already has solidarity, nonprofit and social enterprise models.
Solidarity stores, for example, are a mainstay across Canada. They gained popularity through the 1980s as a community response to poverty and unemployment from neoliberal policies. Well-established in Québec, in particular, many of these social enterprises offer affordable access to food.
They also bolster social missions, like supporting local producers, job training, community governance and local engagement, which reinforce local economies. Today, they directly address the negative impacts of corporatized food systems, including gaps in food access and poor working conditions throughout the supply chain.
Solidarity food retail initiatives in Montréal, including 3 Paniers Alternative Grocery Store and Marché Solidaire Frontenac, use solidarity pricing, support local producers and respond to local community needs through innovative initiatives such as the Carte Proximité — a grocery card program that enables community members to purchase food from accredited stores, who commit to sourcing products directly from local farms.
Beccah Frasier, co-director general of the Carrefour Solidaire Community Food Centre, and our research partner in alternative food retail, reported through the organization’s 2025 annual report that the Carte Proximité program reached more than 4,700 people in Montréal. She emphasized that the program reduced severe food insecurity by 34 per cent and that 95 per cent of participants bought and ate more fruits and vegetables.
Researchers argue that alternative retail spaces not only improve food access, but do so in a dignified manner, in ways that food charity and conventional retail cannot. Being able to walk into a store and choose your own food, rather than accepting whatever a food bank hands you, matters. Researchers say it helps restore a sense of dignity and belonging for people who have been made to feel that eating well is a privilege, not a right.
Alternative retail models, including public and social enterprise approaches, can strengthen local food system resilience by diversifying supply chains, improving access to food and reducing dependence on conventional retail channels.
(Valerie Guerriat)
Building a food system for everyone
The conversation on the economic margins of public grocery stores needs to be recalibrated. Instead of debating whether public grocery stores alone can fix the problem, governments should be investing in the infrastructure — wholesale distribution, regional procurement, supply chain support — that makes alternative models work better.
For example, governments could invest in publicly funded wholesale operations. This would improve regional food procurement and benefit all alternative retailers.
Read more:
Price check: how a public grocery chain would disrupt NZ’s supermarket duopoly
Governments should use every tool available to prevent a handful of corporations from controlling what Canadians eat and to protect the food supply from being caught in international trade disputes. Such investments would create modest competition within a concentrated retail sector.
Governments could also invest in scalable local food access programs or expand local food voucher and farmers’ market coupon programs, such as those being developed in Québec, Ontario and British Columbia.
Governments could improve regulation to protect against control of the food supply by major grocery chains. For example, Empire/Sobeys is in the midst of acquiring Mayrand Entrepôt, an independent chain of four discount grocery stores in Montréal. Currently, the Canadian Competition Bureau is unable to prevent this acquisition.
Public investment in food retail, distribution and wholesale infrastructure could add urgently needed diversity to Canada’s food landscape. Such investment would bolster existing and emerging community-based models and enable food access as a public good.
Testing pilot models and evaluating their impact will validate long-term stability and food system resilience beyond election-year campaigns.
