Jon Liedtke joins 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis for his weekly segment, Liedtke Has a Take!
Jon Liedtke argues Canadian food inflation is exacerbated by government intervention, including supply management cartels, inflationary rebate checks, and municipal grocery store plans. Criticizing corporate practices like security barriers, he insists lowering costs requires dismantling monopolies, stopping government gimmicks, enforcing antitrust laws, and allowing free-market competition.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: Liedtke’s got a take. Good morning, Jon Liedtke.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning, Gene Valaitis.
Gene Valaitis: Okay, I love this take that you have this morning. We’re talking about the price of food and grocery stores and what’s going on. Now, New York and Toronto have approved public, or I guess we can call them government-subsidized, grocery stores. Now, you know, this reminds me of that old Ronald Reagan quote that he said, “The most frightening thing you can hear is somebody say, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Because you know that’s a disaster. Now, government-subsidized grocery stores, is this really a solution to high prices?
Jon Liedtke: No, this is a train wreck in slow motion that we all get front-row seats to watch, Gene. We’re talking about municipal bureaucrats—people who need three fiscal quarters and a consultant study just to patch a pothole—and we’re going to put them in charge of fresh produce, supply chains, and paper-thin retail margins. This will bleed cash, it will have empty shelves, it will leave taxpayers holding the bag—an empty grocery bag, if you will.
But the hypocrisy here is rich because, in New York, we’re watching progressive politicians insist that there will be some type of identification required to enter one of these grocery stores to ensure that non-New Yorkers don’t get to take advantage of it. But these are the same Democrats who say that you can’t have photo ID to vote. I mean, the hypocrisy is just ridiculous. You’re going to have to show proof of residency just to buy state-subsidized milk.
But let’s be honest, this is not policy to feed hungry families. This is central planning theater for ribbon-cutting photo ops for politicians who want to get re-elected. If city halls really want to get into the food business, they can start by offering a refund on the tax dollars that they already greedily eat up, or they could shuffle the money towards existing not-for-profits, charities, and food banks that already know how to deliver on these very thin margins that exist.
Gene Valaitis: Now, you compare public grocery stores to the Timmy’s at the Windsor Regional Hospital. Now, how does a hospital coffee kiosk prove City Hall shouldn’t be selling groceries? This is going to be an interesting answer.
Jon Liedtke: Well, this is the ultimate lesson in municipal economic delusion, Gene. That Tim Hortons at the hospital here is a statistical miracle. They manage to lose money annually—hundreds of thousands—despite having a totally captive, need-to-be-caffeinated audience of stressed-out staff and visitors who literally have nowhere else to go.
Why do they lose money? Because they are paying union-level, hospital-level wages, and corporate HQ at Timmy’s is capping menu prices nationally. So, the math is broken right at the outset. A city-run grocery store with expected union labor overhead and fixed retail pricing will fall into that exact same trap. Except, instead of subsidizing coffee, taxpayers are going to be perpetually subsidizing lettuce. So, when bureaucrats try to run retail, you’re going to end up with a $14 banana that takes 45 minutes to clear a committee.
Gene Valaitis: You’re killing me this morning, Liedtke. Now, Loblaw’s tested physical barrier blocking in their stores until the receipt and the items could be confirmed. So, it sounds to me like grocers are eyeing the Uber algorithmic pricing model, but where’s the line between protecting the bottom line and corporate overreach?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, we had one of those gates down here—I think a couple, actually, in my region in Windsor. Those barriers made me laugh until the legal stupidity actually set in. Blocking shoppers from leaving until granting clearance, that’s not loss prevention. That’s forcible confinement.
Costco gets away with receipt checks because there’s a voluntary membership contract that’s signed by both parties. Loblaw’s doesn’t have that. It’s like no one decided in legal to check the fire code before installing the gates to keep customers locked inside, or were they just too busy building the barricades like they were staging Les Misérables in the produce section?
And, you know, as for surveillance pricing—algorithmically jacking up prices when demand spikes—that’s predatory, it’s corporate, it’s cynical. And yes, of course, theft and technology costs are up. But turning stores into hostile surveillance zones and treating customers like criminal suspects, that’s a great way to drive people straight to independent competitors. Because, I mean, listen, at this rate, buying a box of cereal is going to require a background check.
Gene Valaitis: Now, Ottawa’s spending 12.4 billion on the so-called grocery benefit rebate, supposedly to help out with higher prices. Now, you claim this actually hurts customers.
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, I mean, listen. Printing billions in cash and dumping it into an overheated market to solve high prices is like throwing gasoline on a house fire. You’d think Ottawa would have figured this out—basic supply and demand, or, as Trailer Park Boys say, “supply and command”—after the COVID stimulus checks. But they’re addicted to buying votes with our own diluted currency.
This is just a taxpayer pass-through scheme. Ottawa takes our money, they skim their administrative fee, they hand us back our money, we walk into Loblaw’s, we hand it straight to Galen Weston, and the circle of life is complete. It guarantees corporate profits while driving food inflation higher. But people need to eat today, not hear… You know, we heard from the government we’ve got a 10-year agricultural greenhouse plan to get new vegetables. But, you know, to quote the consistently hungry burger-seeking J. Wellington Wimpy from Popeye, “I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” People want a hamburger today, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: You got it. Now, Trump’s trade team is targeting the Canadian supply management system in CUSMA talks. Now, you call this system “stupid” and you call it a “government cartel.” So, what needs to change?
Jon Liedtke: Well, it is mind-bogglingly stupid. I don’t like our supply management. We’ve created state-sanctioned cartels that force Canadian families to pay higher prices artificially for essential staples, while we force farmers to dump perfectly good product to maintain quotas.
Meanwhile, we’ve got that foreign-owned plant that opened up outside of Ottawa that processes excess Canadian dairy, turns it into baby formula, and ships it off to China, but local parents are facing sky-high costs or empty shelves at times. And it’s indefensible. If the government wants to have a strategic dairy reserve, fine, build one out. But stop punishing working families at the checkout line to protect an artificial monopoly that we’re building out and continually pushing out.
So, open the market, unleash the competition, stop legalizing food destruction in a cost-of-living crisis. We don’t need government trying to convince us that destroying good food to keep prices high is a point of national pride. It shouldn’t be.
Gene Valaitis: All right. Final question: Now, if government stores, cash rebates, and—as you call them—”Fort Loblaws” and central planning aren’t the answer, I mean, all kidding aside, what is the practical solution to high food prices? Because Canada, in the G7, we are number one in food inflation.
Jon Liedtke: Ditch the gimmicks, Gene. No state-run stores, no inflationary checks, no corporate turnstile barriers. If we want to lower prices: enforce real antitrust laws, break up our oligopolies, smash the barriers that keep independent grocers out, dismantle the supply management cartels driving up retail costs, stop printing fake economic rebates, and let the actual market forces work. Stop protecting the monopolistic systems at the direct expense of you, me, and your listeners. If politicians really want to lower grocery bills, they don’t need to build a city supermarket; they just need to get out of the way and allow for real competition.
Gene Valaitis: Bang. You nailed it this morning.
Jon Liedtke: Thank you.
Gene Valaitis: There he goes, Jon Liedtke. Liedtke’s got a take. He’ll be back on Friday.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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