Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and her so-called Liberal Party are having a love in down in Windsor today. They had better enjoy that group hug inside because the town of Windsor is not feeling all that loving. And neither are a lot of liberals in Ontario.
It is a banker problem. It started with asking a banker like Don Drummond to solve Ontario’s financial problems. Drummond was a waste of time. Now you have a report from Ed Clark, another banker. These reports are supposedly to help Wynne’s finance guy, Charles Sousa, another erstwhile banker. And that only proves that we have to stop asking bankers difficult questions.
And did Ms. Wynne really hire former politicians Janet Ecker and Frances Lankin to assist the banker? What kind of political payoff was that? Should she not have hired some people who understood the social impacts and long-term financial consequences of what was being discussed?
If these so-called experts are going to examine rationalization of Ontario hydro distribution or rationalization of alcohol distribution in Ontario, why not give them the types of experts who understand the implications of this rationalization?
It is something of a joke for the panel to report that the Liquor stores should sell 12-packs as well as 6-packs of beer—but not two-fours! That is the kind of incremental crap that Ontario citizens have been fed for years and they are getting damn sick of it. The report’s answers on beer, wine and alcohol distribution fail to address any of the real issues.
And just how the hell is the Ontario government going to get more revenue out of those awful beer stores without the foreign owners of the Beer Store getting more and more unearned profits?
What Ms. Wynne and her sycophants in Windsor this weekend do not realize is that this is not a very important issue in the overall concerns of Ontario citizens. It just happens to be a concern for progressive voters who were very helpful in defeating Timmy Hudak and Andrea Horwath in the last election. Ms. Wynne should pay more attention to who the people are she is pissing off.
By the way, there is one thing the TD Bank executive said in his report that made sense. He said that “The LCBO should build its business around what the consumer wants, instead of what it wants.” That is exactly what privatization would achieve.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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