Beer cans stacked at a news availability attended by Ontario Premier Doug Ford at a convenience store in Toronto on Dec. 14, 2023.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
When Ontario Premier Doug Ford took the podium this week to talk about his plan to let corner stores sell beer and wine, reporters peppered him with skeptical questions. That’s their job after all.
Why had it taken him so long? He had promised to do this way back in 2018. It is now almost 2024 and the new rules on alcohol sales won’t take effect till 2026.
Wasn’t he worried about the effect on public health? And why was his Progressive Conservative government making this a priority anyway? Wasn’t he a teetotaller himself?
Fair questions, and Mr. Ford fielded them with the blustery confidence that is his trademark. Yes, it had taken a long time, but he was handcuffed by a deal that his Liberal predecessor struck with the brewers and the liquor board that allowed beer and wine in some grocery stores but locked in many of the absurd rules that have governed booze sales in Ontario for decades.
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No, he doesn’t drink himself, but he thinks Ontarians who do should be able to stop at a corner store on the way home to pick up a bottle of plonk, just as they do in Quebec and scores of countries around the globe.
As for health worries, he said that he respected the groups who say that making alcohol more convenient to buy could lead to more alcoholism, but that it is time to start treating people like adults. Alcohol sales will not descend into mere anarchy under the new regime. Consumers will be expected to use alcohol responsibly and vendors to sell it the same way. They already sell tobacco and lottery tickets, with rules prohibiting sales to minors. Why not beer and wine?
Mr. Ford is right on this one: It’s time. Time to bring alcohol sales out of the dark ages. Time to stop pretending that putting tall boys next to the potato chips on the corner-store shelf will lead to rampage and ruin. Time to put Ontario in step with most of the modern world. Time to stand up to the entrenched forces that have stymied reform for so long.
The only real question about Mr. Ford’s announcement was one that reporters didn’t ask: Why didn’t he go further? Despite all his boasts about what he called the biggest expansion of consumer choice in 100 years, he has left the two behemoths of alcohol sales standing. The Beer Store will continue to run its more than 400 beer-only outlets till at least 2033, though it will lose its monopoly on the sale of packs of 12 and 24 cans. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario will keep its monopoly on spirits.
Why? No other place in Canada – and as far as I know, the world – has a whole network of stores devoted exclusively to the sale of beer. It’s a holdover from the 1920s, a horse-and-buggy on the superhighway of modern retailing.
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Consumers can already buy beer at the LCBO, some supermarkets, craft breweries and, since the pandemic, from bars and restaurants. In a couple of years, thanks to Mr. Ford, they will be able to buy beer at corner stores, too. Keeping the Beer Store in place in this new environment is bizarre.
It’s hard to justify the continued existence of the LCBO, too. There is no reason for the provincial government to be in the alcohol-retailing business. Private stores, not government outlets, sell booze in most parts of the world. Alberta privatized liquor sales 30 years ago. The world did not end. Saskatchewan is going down the same path.
The idea that governments lose rivers of revenue when they get out of alcohol retailing is plain wrong. Most of their gains come from booze taxes, which continue to be collected whether a bottle of wine is sold in a corner store or a government outlet.
This would have been a perfect time to blow up the whole rotten edifice of alcohol retailing in Ontario. Mr. Ford, who calls himself a champion of free enterprise, was the right man to do it. As welcome as his reforms are, he missed his chance.