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Colby Cosh: Paging Avi Lewis — Canada's communitarian grocer gets food inflation, too

The customer-owned Co-Op has been around for a century. It has rising costs that get passed on to consumers, just like everyone else

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Imagine, if you dare, a different Canada, a Canada where we’re not all hostage to the whims of a few for-profit grocery chains. Imagine a Canada that had cooperative non-profit alternatives, ones anchored in strong socialist and community ideals. A whole network, even, of purely local institutions owned by their customers and governed by member-elected boards. Any profits earned could go back directly to the members, with no overpaid executives devouring billion-dollar slices of the business. You could even have a digital account you could consult 24/7 to see how your investment was doing.

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Non-members, of course, would be welcome to shop at these stores: those shoppers wouldn’t have equity in the business, nor would they have the right to choose management and decide on operating principles, but the immense savings alone from the removal of the........

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