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Or sign-in if you have an account.New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani waves during his public inauguration ceremony in New York. Photo by TIMOTHY A.CLARY /AFP via Getty ImagesCanadian media are taking the notion of publicly owned grocery stores entirely too seriously — both at the federal level, as NDP leader Avi Lewis promises a nationwide chain, and at the municipal level, after Toronto City Council recently approved a four-store “pilot project” by a fairly astonishing vote of 21-3.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. 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Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorIf imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the Canadian left is flattering the living hell out of public grocer Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City. They are practically seething with envy and misplaced ambition. But recent news from New York calls the entire project into question, if common sense and economics hadn’t done that already.On Monday, the city announced the second planned Mamdani-mart location. It’s to be in the South Bronx, part of a new affordable-housing development — this couldn’t really be more on-brand for the mayor — on the site of a now-shuttered youth detention centre.This newsletter from NP Comment tackles the topics you care about. (Subscriber-exclusive edition on Fridays)By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againOne of the chief arguments for government grocery is to irrigate “food deserts” — areas where residents have little access to affordable, healthy food. In some parts of the United States, the situation is truly dire, certainly if you insist on fresh produce. (Frozen and canned produce are perfectly nutritious, of course, but there’s something about the lack of “fresh” Peruvian asparagus and Mexican broccoli that really upsets left-leaning people who have plenty of money for groceries.)The improbably named town of Cairo, one of the poorest places in Illinois, has made the news several times over the years as a fairly spectacular example. Resident can shop at a Dollar General, which hasn’t traditionally sold fresh produce — but which is starting to — or there’s a Walmart almost 50 kilometres away.Cautionary example: a publicly owned co-op in Cairo, conceived as a remedy, was a flop. It closed earlier this year. (Mind you, absurdly, it had focused on organic food, which the president of the board eventually conceded “didn’t fit the model … in an area that’s high poverty.” No kidding.)Cairo is a town of 1,500 people, though. New York City, despite some eccentric zoning laws that tend to benefit bodegas (basically overgrown convenience stores) over larger grocery models, is teeming with supermarkets. That includes in the South Bronx neighbourhood where this new Mamdani-mart intends to open. There are two perfectly decent grocery stores within 10 minutes’ walk.Oddly, local council member Justin Sanchez doesn’t seem to have noticed. “The South Bronx should be a bountiful oasis of nutritious food, not a desert,” he said Monday. Let a hundred cauliflowers bloom!The first announced Mamdani-mart location is in East Harlem. There are even more existing supermarkets within 10 minutes’ walk of that one.The existing grocers aren’t much pleased about all this, as you would expect. They are mounting a resistance campaign. But they don’t have much to worry about for a while, at least. The East Harlem location isn’t scheduled to open until 2029 (when Mamdani will be up for re-election); the South Bronx location, only by the end of 2027.The situation in Toronto is similarly confounding for government grocery fans. National Post headquarters is right next door to St. James Town, which is one of the city’s poorer neighbourhoods. No Frills, Food Basics and FreshCo are in a pitched battle for your discount-grocery dollar within a few minutes’ walk of each other. FreshCo and No Frills do battle at Jane and Finch. Toronto’s “food deserts” are surprisingly fertile.Majora Carter, an advocate for South Bronx redevelopment, offered the New York Times an interesting observation: Why not just subsidize existing food-sellers in targeted neighbourhoods? Obviously Mamdani-mart isn’t going to be profitable. It’s just a question of how to spend the public money. “That could start tomorrow,” Carter said.The NDP could make the same argument here. Or it could propose incentives for co-op grocery stores (though as National Post’s Colby Cosh noted recently, those already exist in parts of Canada, and they are every bit as subject to food inflation as the mega-grocers).But of course, that would dull the populist edge of the issue. Lewis’s entire pitch is just anti-corporatism dressed up for Sunday dinner.Canada’s big grocers are public companies, with obligations to report their financials. We know their net profit margins. And while those have generally increased in recent years, even the Dread Pirate Loblaw is making a margin of less than four per cent. If Galen Weston dialled that down to two per cent, Canadians would not notice a massive change in their grocery bills. The public grocery stores are buying the same stuff as the private ones, from the same wholesalers. Presumably they’re going to pay their employees at least as well as the unionized big grocers. The only conceivable competitive advantage is stocking fewer items, and I’m really not sure that’s going to lure people away from No Frills, which — say what you will about the Westons — is a pretty tremendous supermarket.“This store … will serve as physical proof of our conviction that government can be a force for good, that government can drive change that improves people’s lives,” Mamdani said Monday of the South Bronx public groceteria, pretty much giving the game away.At the end of the day, this isn’t primarily about cheaper groceries. This is about expanding the public sector by any means possible. It’s big enough.National Post cselley@postmedia.com Get the latest from Chris Selley straight to your inbox Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.