This has been on the table since day one. Ontario’s foreign-owned Beer Stores have finally played the price card. Wynne’s Whigs have them cornered and threatening to raise retail beer prices is the only tactic left to our foreign beer barons. Wynne has already said that there will be no change in how Ontario residents get to buy their suds. All the government wants is for the Beer Store proprietors to pay the government more for the right to sell beer in this province.
And it is not as if there are no taxes already paid by the beer barons.
But when the owners cry poor-mouth and say that the Beer Store earns no revenue that is just an accounting trick. When an integrated distribution system such as the Beer Store counts its pennies (to the tune of about $4 billion per year), it can leave the profit where it benefits the owners the most. The only independent study of beer sales in Ontario by the University of Waterloo suggested that there is a profit on 24-bottle cases of about $700 million per year. When you add the money spent through the Ontario government on recycling liquor, wine and beer bottles and other containers, you would think that the government would have a very clear idea of where the profits can be found.
It is the consumers who have no idea of how much they are being ripped off by both the government and our foreign beer barons. We are the last to learn. What we do know is that the same 24-bottle case in Quebec costs at least $14 less than in Ontario. Part of it is a difference in taxes but at least $10 more goes to the Ontario Beer Store monopoly.
Anyone who thinks Ontario citizens are getting a fair deal from these foreign-owned beer barons is an idiot. Wynne and her Whigs are colossally ignorant if they think they can expose this travesty and then save their behinds in the next election.
Why should we put up with the bad smell, the bad merchandising, the inconvenience and the dreadful service of Beer Stores that are a provincial disgrace? And why should we tolerate any longer a system of distributing beer that was conceived in the 1920s and stupid politicians have been afraid to change ever since.
We have to realize that the people of Ontario have come of age even if our politicians have not. There is absolutely no reason for beer and wine not to be sold in convenience stores. And liquor stores should be what consumers want not what politicians’ decree.
It is time for us all to grow up.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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