Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak’s got it wrong. He usually does but this one is way off the mark. He thinks Ontario beer drinkers only want cheap beer. What beer drinkers really want is their freedom. They want freedom from the tyranny of The Beer Store. They want freedom to buy their beer with food in big grocery stores and in corner stores. They want freedom to send their empty bottles to recycling depots that are geared to handling these used containers in volume. They want the politicians of all makes and models to get their hands out of the beer business.
Ask your local provincial candidates what they are going to do about beer freedom? They will try to tell you that The Beer Store is privately owned and it only sells 80 per cent of the suds sold in Ontario. Yes, by law in Ontario, Brewers Retail—the parent company of The Beer Store—is owned by three beer companies, one owned in Belgium, one owned in Colorado in the U.S.A. and one owned in Japan. As they have a lock on 80 per cent of the beer sales in Ontario, The Beer Store can be called a monopoly. And their only competitors are the government-owned Liquor Control Board of Ontario and Ontario brewers’ company stores. And that means that beer sales are a monopoly.
Since 1927, Ontario beer drinkers have had to put up with this stupidity. It was arranged by ignorant politicians with mutton-chop whiskers. It was a solution to those early politicians’ fear of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. And where is the WCTU today? Does any politician today fear them? No, but those politicians still have a strangle hold on our beer.
The politicians like the money. They can set the price of beer. They can get money from the brewers and the consumers. They can add taxes that the consumer need not know about. They can control the hours of sale. They can add costs to the bottles and cans to force us to recycle.
But the most severe of the insults to us consumers is that we have to tolerate those crappy beer stores. Many used to call them the ‘In and Outs’ until a smart advertising man said ‘Nobody knows from Brewers Retail. Why not call them what they are: beer stores?’
It is really too bad that they never hired a smart marketing person. A smart marketing person would have explained that beer and food go together. They are logically linked in the consumers’ minds. You might just want some pretzels or a bag of chips but beer and food are linked. The idiots need to stop denying it.
They also need to understand that what The Beer Store really does is promote excessive drinking of beer. Those sure are responsible politicians who encourage that! The facts are that if beer was sold in grocery stores, smaller packaging would be sold. Smaller packaging is more profitable for the brewers. Smaller packaging would encourage more responsible drinking.
So next time you are talking to your local provincial candidate, tell him or her to get out of the beer business. They do not know what they are doing.
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