All along, we were assuming that Ontario Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak was saving his ace in the hole for late in his campaign. He would have had it as his clincher. It was allowing the sale of beer and wine in convenience stores. It was assumed that he intended to show that Premier Wynne is living in the past and that New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath is afraid of the Brewers’ Warehousing union. All for naught!
Would you believe that Timmy has dropped his plan for revolutionizing beer and wine sales in Ontario? He says the plan has been put on the back burner. He has been told by too many of his base Conservative vote that freedom for beer and wine sales is a no-no. The poor schmuck has been screwed by his own myopic church-going supporters.
It could have taken up the entire last week of the campaign. Timmy wanted to visit every one of the 7500 convenience stores in Ontario and sew up the votes there. It was a no brainer. Timmy wanted every purchaser of a lottery ticket to be told to vote for his local Conservative. It was the way the voter was going to be able to buy beer conveniently.
It would have meant that the Toronto Star would have its editorial hands tied for the last week of the campaign. If the Toronto Star wants convenience stores to sell beer and wine, the newspaper would have had to back Timmy. (The Toronto Star is capable of that.)
For once in the campaign, the Toronto Star would have to point out that Premier Wynne and her dinosaur provincial Whigs are blocking progress. The Whigs are letting a foreign monopoly make all the profits from Ontario’s favourite suds. The one-time Ontario-owned Brewers’ Warehousing and its ubiquitous In-and-Out beer stores have fallen into the evil grasp of foreign-owned brewers.
The only politician tied in a pretzel over this convenience store issue was the Pillsbury Dough girl, New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath. Her and her caucus had flatly refused to discuss the sale of wine and beer by convenience stores. It is hardly that the party is stuck in the past but it is trapped by some of the unions. While fewer Beer Store employees are actually union members today, they still hold sway over the New Democrats. The party can hardly afford to lose much more union support.
But it was too hard to believe that such a badly misled party as the Ontario Conservatives might have been the only party willing to free the province from its archaic approach to beer and wine sales. It would have made sense when you consider that the Tories are desperate, the Liberals living in the past and the New Democrats frightened. And Timmy Hudak’s supporters told him to drop it? What the hell have politics come to in this province?
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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