Looks like they are trying to fit him with a mirkin from a distance.

Today I considered putting on the "Jesse and the Rippers" version of Forever when my wife asked me to put on some music.

That's how Superman learned to fly, canonically.

"Claude, if you were an executive at Maple Leafs Sports and Entrainment, who would you hire as part of your team to make fans stop yelling at you and calling you a weird little guy?"

"Public, non-profit grocery stores!" is easier to market/brand. But I think it's a fairly costly solution to a problem where there are other good and less costly solutions (albeit ones that are harder to explain to a voter).

This kind of model already exists, it's just not the government negotiating, it's parent retail companies. Parent company will negotiate a set price with a distributor for x product and all franchisees can get it at that price. Just do that same thing but at a massive scale.

Yup. A single price negotiated centrally on a basic list of unbranded goods. Anybody can access them at that price but you have to carry min stock based on your store's footprint and you can't charge more than the MSRP (which is a low profit product).

Yup. The public store is gonna be paying more for products than others just due to scale. I think you'd be better served just negotiating a single price direct with suppliers for a basket of basic food staples. Then you tell all retailers "you need to carry these products. X min stock. Y max price."

I personally tend to favour solutions that meet people where they are. If we are starting a nation from jump, I'm building basic grocery infrastructure. Building it now, given what exists already is a little too costly and complex. I'd rather just legislate what's already available better.

How many times has it been floated that we sell the LCBO? Every policy is subject to government change. You just have to make policy that is so clearly good and popular that it becomes poisonous to run against it.

Yup. It's laughable how politicians and media will parrot lines about the slim margins on grocery. We can literally see the profits being turned in by these companies. That money is coming from somewhere

Absolutely. I think the state owned grocery idea is mostly PR. Which is fine. Positive PR can be good. But in practice, I think you can achieve the same outcomes via legislative means (like the ways you just flagged re competition enforcement).

But if we're talking about industry nationalization, I'm side eying the energy sector before grocery tbh.

I think you'd have even less political will to do that. Especially since they are publicly held so the opposition could easily run on "they are stealing your pension by taking this stock off the market!". But yes, nationalizing something that exists already, would be easier than starting over.

Again, we don't have the political will at any level. If I'm the NDP, I'm pushing of grocery reform as a main campaign point. I'm just not promising public grocery stores. Too easy to poke holes in that and I'm not confident the results would be worse than other more achievable options.

Absolutely we should try other stuff. I just don't personally think creating public grocery infrastructure is necessary when (if you have the political will to make a change like that) you could more easily mandate grocery chains to offer these same basic goods at affordable prices.

It would absolutely impact them. I'm pushing back on that being unfair. It's completely fair. Having to price your goods to meet your competitive landscape is fair as hell.

100%. But so would city or province run grocery stores. My point is mostly that you could get to the same outcome (getting people fed) more easily/cheaply through other means. In both scenarios you need the political will which we do not have at any level unfortunately.

That's not a simple/easy thing to do but it's a lot easier and cheaper than doing that same thing for hundreds or thousands of products, sourcing spaces to lease, building stores, warehouses, and delivery infrastructure, then staffing and running these stores.

For sure. You would basically need to fed/province to pick a list of 50 basic staple products or whatever and negotiate a set cost on those then mandate a minimum in stock and maximum markup for those products based on the cost they themselves negotiated. Basically a "no name" but centralized.

Like setting up a list of staple products. Negotiate a set price for those and mandate they be carried at a max margin rate if you want to sell groceries.

Right and if we didn't already have those, I would make the same case that the cost to scale them from nothing doesn't make a ton of sense. The reason they exist is because alcohol being sold through grocery is relatively new. You could get the same effect of guaranteeing affordable foods other ways

Maybe he could find an underling to manage services policy and other more local things and he just focus on the investment/economic growth stuff. If the NDP could claw back enough power that they can start making policy demands, that would probably also work.

That IMF report that just came out legitimately looks really good for Canada tbh. Very rosy economic outlook. It's genuinely hilarious how big a contrast there is between how I think Carney handles these kind of macro/international topics vs. micro/national ones.

Personally, I wouldn't advocate for city run grocery stores here because the logistical cost to get it up and running would be high. Would rather mandate affordable staples be carried by existing stores. But the idea that city run grocery stores would be unfair to for profit retailers is laughable.

If Pelley puts Sundin in a spot that leads me to dislike/criticize him, I'm gonna be so fucking pissed off.

Maybe they'll bring back Dave Nonis

Yeah he's awesome.and also has bird bones. They're on the Leafs path imo.

Alternatively, it might be some AI huckster. Maybe one that enjoys a nice baconator.

Prime aged but overrated and oft hurt.