Visualize this: Ed Clark of TD Bank and former banker Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa are in Sousa’s Queen’s Park office. They have their $600 brogues up on Charles’ desk and each a substantial glass of single malt scotch in hand. You can smell the scent of the peat bogs in that scotch as it is savoured. And Charles says: “What do you think we should do with the damn beer stores Ed?
It is a classic case of the ignorant leading the culpable.
Ontario citizens have had to tolerate the ignominy and insult of bad beer retailing for more than 100 years. It is pathetic marketing, promoting pitiful merchandising, perpetrated by long-dead blue stockings and perpetuated by poor-excuses for politicians. The Beer Store is a disgrace and a disservice to the people of Ontario.
Letting two semi-retired bankers address the issue is damn silly. And they think they are just going to demand more money from the foreign owners of the Beer Stores?
But the problem encompasses both the Beer Stores and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). These two operations represent close to 40 per cent of the Canadian beverage alcohol market. They are out-of-control monsters that our politicians have been afraid to touch or trouble. They offer patronage, political payoffs and prestige. They are cash cows that provide the province with billions. They also represent an antiquated and out-dated and an outrageous demonstration of the contempt with which Ontario politicians hold the voters.
The combined LCBO and Beer Stores return a dividend annually of about $3 billion to provincial revenues. No provincial treasurer has so much as questioned this largess despite the questionable ethics involved and the conflicts created.
But truly independent studies have been finding that Ontario has been forgoing potentially higher revenue. The problem is that the province acts as importer and wholesaler, distributor, retailer, regulator and collector of taxes for the LCBO while giving free rein to the foreign brewers who own Brewers Retail operations which are known as The Beer Store. In a free market world, neither system works for the consumer.
The best protection for this stupidity is the lazy unthinking voter who is satisfied with the status quo. “It works,” the voter sagely says, “Why rock the boat?”
The simple answer is: We can do better. We can create more jobs. We can get better tax revenues. We can have more choice. We can have greater convenience. We can have warehouse stores and fancy stores, convenient stores and neighbourhood stores. We can do more for domestic products. We can sell beer and wine in convenience stores and improve our convenience stores in the process. We can have liquor stores that have Air Miles promotions and stores that just offer better prices. And in the process, the government will find that total alcoholic beverage revenues exceed what the Beer Stores and LCBO produce for the government today. Entrepreneurship will guarantee that.
And then government can go back to being the licensing body, the regulator, the tax collector, that it is supposed to be on our behalf of us voters. It has certainly been doing a lousy job of being a booze merchant.
And do you know what the easiest part of this is? It is telling politicians that we want this to happen. Every Queen’s Park habitué with whom you come in contact can be told: “We want Ontario to come of age.” “We want privatized alcohol sales in Ontario.” “It is time for Ontario to grow up.”
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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