Avi Lewis beantwortet den NDP-Führungsfragebogen von rabble

>Think Costco run as a public service – a public network of 50 grocery stores across the country would offer 30 to 45 per cent cheaper food prices and cost $300 million a year to run.

This is so unrealistic it isn’t even funny. I think a lot of the people who are broadly supportive of public options for groceries will be lost when they see this claim. A company like Costco has costs roughly 10x the size of what Lewis claims it will cost the government to operate the chain of stores. He’s not being realistic. I’ve seen his [policyalternative.com](http://policyalternative.com) article that tries to justify it, but it doesn’t show its work and doesn’t evaluate anything near the size and scope of what Lewis is promoting. There also is just not enough room to cut costs that much to save people over 30%+ on groceries. Profit margins in grocery stores are quite low, and they will have cheaper labour and likely less staff. Overall, it’s a terrible policy idea that is being justified by extremely misleading numbers.

Further, 50 stores will also have massive coverage gaps, and substantial portions of rural Canada will be excluded. This won’t help the NDP regain seats in rural areas and might simply exacerbate rural-urban divides.

>Second, we are running on a [Green New Deal](https://lewisforleader.ca/ideas/green-new-deal) to create over a million good-paying union jobs in every corner of this country by investing two per cent of Canada’s GDP in tackling the climate emergency, creating decades of employment for trades workers, care workers, transportation workers, youth, scientists, fossil fuel workers, and more. 

He’s gonna have to show more evidence that this will lead to 1,000,000 jobs and won’t lead to substantial job losses in other industries. Like what work are you creating for trades workers? Give concrete examples. I’ve been waiting for him to expand on this, but it’s been nothing but hollow promises. Also, he’s literally trying to say no more infrastructure for oil and gas, so good luck convincing them he has jobs for them.

>Thirdly, a [national rent cap](https://lewisforleader.ca/ideas/housing) that will give power back to renters and put an end to steep rent hikes. The cap will mean that rent cannot be raised by more than the rate of inflation in each province or territory including for vacant units, so landlords cannot jack up rents between tenants. The federal government can do this by implementing backstop legislation that strengthens provincial and territorial rent controls.

This is where the NDP lost me in 2025. It is a terrible policy from a federal party. For the love of everything good, someone please tell the federal NDP to stop trying to implement policies that are so obviously within provincial jurisdiction. Saying he’ll do this “ by implementing backstop legislation that strengthens provincial and territorial rent controls“ makes no sense; it sounds like he’s trying to use similar policy instruments like the Carbon Tax without understanding how it was passed to start and that it required POGG and the national concern doctrine to pass. National Rent caps ***will not*** withstand the three-point test of the national concern doctrine, either. This simply won’t work if that’s his intention.

>First of all, I would repeal the major projects provisions in Bill C-5. It allows the federal government to approve projects, including fossil fuel infrastructure, while bypassing consultations and environmental assessments. It’s the type of bill that would make Stephen Harper blush, ignoring Indigenous rights and flagrantly disregarding the fact that we’re in a climate emergency. We need powerlines, not pipelines – especially not if they’re rushed through over the objections of communities who are trying to protect our air, water and land. 

Bill C-5 is broadly supported by the public and goes well beyond pipelines. He’s coming off as anti-development here. This will be seen as more of the same from the current NDP. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear Avi Lewis was trying to tank the party.

>We need an independent foreign policy that pursues alliances with a host of like-minded countries. There is strength in numbers, and we should prioritize deepening ties with progressive governments including Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Spain, to stand up to Trump collectively. All of these countries have not hesitated to chart their own course on the world stage, including by condemning the genocide in Palestine and standing up against the bullying of smaller nations in the Western Hemisphere by the Trump administration.

Of course he mentions Gaza in the talk about foreign policy and Trump, lol. They can’t avoid talking about it or bringing it up unprompted. However, it is laughable to suggest we should combat Trump by working with a bunch developing nations that are essentially narco states and Spain. We need way stronger allies than them. It’s clear that geopolitics are not Avi Lewis or the NDP’s thing.

>As well as an independent foreign policy, we must also build an independent and resilient domestic economy that can withstand the shocks of Trump’s tariffs. Our economy has become far too intertwined and reliant on our neighbour to the south. That’s why we’re running on a plan to expand public ownership, creating new Canadian crown corporations to deliver affordable services from groceries to telecoms to postal banking.

This says nothing about how you will make up for the loss of export capacity and market access. Public options won’t make us less reliant on the US, especially in banking and telecommunications; we still import massive amounts of food from the US, particularly produce. So, he essentially has no foreign policy plan.

I feel like instead of putting all of this time and effort into a public grocery chain and coming up with these completely unsubstantiated numbers and assertions in regards to the how & why of it, it’d make more sense to just focus on a combination of evidence driven polices that would actually result in increased affordability and lower prices over time for groceries (increased transfers to households, liberalizing internal trade, doing what Manitoba’s NDP government has done in regards to going after restrictive property controls/convents & lease agreements that inflate grocery prices & promoting more urban density and mixed use developments to make mid & small sized grocery competition more viable etc.)