OTTAWA — NDP leadership candidate Avi Lewis is promising to lower grocery bills across the country by bringing in a national “public option” to compete with corporate supermarket chains, but economists say this could be a hard row to hoe for a meagre yield.
“I think it would be profoundly expensive, and very difficult to make succeed, for a relatively marginal benefit for Canadians,” said Mike von Massow, a professor of food, agriculture and resource economics at the University of Guelph.
