Public Options to Stop Price Gouging

Corporate profits are skyrocketing in Canada, while more and more of us are unable to afford the basics of a dignified life, like housing, food and access to communications.

An Avi-led NDP would address these market failures by fighting for a new generation of public corporations – federal, provincial, municipal, and Indigenous – to make life more affordable and create thousands of good-paying public jobs across the country.

Public ownership puts the needs of workers, families, and communities over profit for the few. Revenues are reinvested in the public good rather than converted into dividends for the rich.

Canada has a rich history of public ownership, including an airline, a railway, an energy company, a vaccine agency, just to name a few. Multiple NDP governments have also created public options at the provincial level, like public auto insurance in Manitoba, the agricultural land reserve to protect food security in B.C., and a public telecom provider in Saskatchewan.

Now, it's time to build a new generation of public enterprise in Canada.

A public option for groceries

The cost of food and grocery chain profits have both skyrocketed since the COVID pandemic. Today in Canada, more and more people simply can't afford to eat: 1 in 4 Canadians are living in food-insecure households; food bank usage is skyrocketing; and parents are increasingly skipping meals to feed their kids.

Meanwhile, Galen Weston, the owner of Loblaws, is worth $18 billion. This is what market failure looks like. When wealth balloons for the 1% while the market fails to deliver the necessities of a dignified life at affordable prices for the rest of us, the government needs to step in.

Canada needs public, non-profit grocery stores from coast to coast to coast. A public option for groceries would reduce the cost of food and create thousands of good-paying jobs.

Mexico already has a chain of state-owned grocery stores, and U.S. military members and their families access publicly-run, subsidized grocery stores called commissaries. A Canada-wide public grocery option would be staffed by unionized workers, and follow Good Food purchasing guidelines based on key values including: local economies, health, valued workforce, animal welfare, and environmental sustainability. Think Costco – but run as a public service.

An Avi-led NDP would work with provinces, municipalities, and co-ops to establish public grocery stores across the country, with an initial focus on serving food deserts. The public grocer would be supplied and backed up by a range of enhanced public infrastructure, including:

Food Generation

A public farms fund to help municipalities buy food-producing lands as farmers age, and pay those farmers to mentor younger ones before they retire. Municipalities could generate revenue from renting the lands to program graduates.

Food Hubs

Public investments (through an expanded mandate for Farm Credit Canada) in local and regional infrastructure hubs so that food can be grown, stored, processed and sold closer to home - outside of corporate value chains.

Food In Our Backyard

A robust local food procurement policy to harness the billions of dollars of purchasing power of public institutions (schools, hospitals, correctional facilities, long term care facilities, etc.) to invest in local food providers.

Access to food is a basic human right. An Avi-led NDP would invest in public grocery stores, and national food and farming infrastructure to ensure everyone in the country can afford to eat.

A network of public telecom providers

Canada's telecom market is currently carved up amongst an oligopoly of telecom providers that dominate cellphone and internet services in Canada and gobble up smaller competitors whenever they show strength. As a result, Canadians face some of the highest cell phone and internet prices in the world.

An Avi-led NDP would deploy a range of public options to lower telecom prices across the country, including a network of public telecom service providers —inspired by the success of Saskatchewan's publicly-owned SaskTel —to guarantee universal, affordable and high-speed connectivity, including in rural, remote and Indigenous communities.

Public networks would prioritize equitable access over profit, reinvest revenues into infrastructure upgrades, support local jobs, and challenge oligopoly control in the telecommunications sector. In the short term, Avi's NDP would advance other levers to quickly increase telecom access for all, including mandating affordability through existing legislation at the CRTC.

Building a million public homes

Canada's lack of affordable housing is the number one factor driving the everyday emergency of just getting by in this country today.

Until the early 1990s, the federal government invested heavily in building non-market, co-op and social housing, in partnership with provinces and the non-profit sector.

An Avi-led NDP would get the federal government back into the public housing business by establishing a public builder to deliver one million social, co-op, non-profit and supportive homes within five years. The agency would cut costs and speed construction by:

• using federal lands for building where appropriate;
• adopting modular and pre-fab designs that are already developed by the CMHC;
• focusing on energy-efficiency, lowering energy bills and carbon emissions;
• keeping rents lower than market rates, but sufficient to cover costs over time.

An Avi-led NDP will ensure a public builder creates the affordable housing that the private sector has failed to deliver, helping end chronic homelessness, and creating good jobs for Canadians.

Postal banking

Canada's six largest banks reported over $50 billion in profits in 2024, partly stemming from excessive fees and high interest rates that make life even more unaffordable across the country. About a million Canadians are also underserved by the current banking system, and forced to rely on costly payday lenders and cheque-cashing outlets to get through the month.

Postal banking can provide a public option that will make life more affordable for customers, fund our postal service, and break the payday lenders' monopoly. The United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany are among the dozens of countries around the world offering access to affordable accounts, financial services and loans through the post office. Until the 1960's, both Canada and the U.S. did the same.

An Avi-led NDP would fight to bring postal banking back to Canada, putting existing postal infrastructure to work to lower banking costs. Canada Post has more than 6,000 outlets across the country, and is often the only federal presence in rural, remote and Indigenous communities. With this network, postal banking can ensure that everyone in Canada has access to affordable banking, while injecting much-needed competition into the financial sector.

Canada's postal banks would be mandated to:

• support small and Indigenous businesses and co-ops with affordable credit;
• prioritize green investments;
• provide affordable remittance services to those sending money abroad; and
• ensure universal access to accounts, financial services and digital payments.

It's time to bring postal banking back to Canada.

A public pharmaceutical manufacturer

During the COVID pandemic, for-profit pharmaceutical companies made billions while countries competed with one another for vaccine supplies instead of distributing them globally to stop the virus' spread across borders.

An Avi-led NDP would rebuild Canada's public vaccine production capacity while reducing reliance on multinational pharma and foreign supply chains, to ensure reliable and affordable pharmaceutical supplies for Canadians and people around the world.

Canada once had a world-renowned public pharmaceutical company, Connaught Labs, that developed vaccines for Canadians and worked with the World Health Organization to meet global health needs. But the agency was privatized under Brian Mulroney's Conservative government. Avi's NDP will establish Connaught 2.0, to:

• rebuild domestic vaccine production capacity,
• reduce reliance on multinational pharma and foreign supply chains,
• and to ensure reliable, affordable and equitable supply for Canadians.

A public pharmaceutical manufacturer will invest in next-generation vaccines (mRNA, pan-coronavirus, universal influenza, antimicrobial resistance, cancer immunotherapies) and share technology and production capacity with low-income countries.

Canada must take back control of our vaccines and be a leader in global health and health equity.