For years, the Ford government has been liberalizing alcohol sales in the province, chipping away at the government quasi-monopoly on alcohol. A strike by the LCBO was all but inevitable. It’s ongoing now, and it looks like it will remain so, as the Ford government refuses to concede to a union demand to cancel plans to sell pre-mixed drinks in private retail spots. The union worries this will undermine the provincial retailer and, by implication, the job security of its employees.
On Monday, the government launched an interactive map to help consumers find booze in their communities. Ford framed the endeavour as a provincial service for buyers and sellers alike, calling it “a great way to connect people across the province to local Ontario-made products and support the hundreds of Ontario businesses and thousands of Ontario workers who make these products and serve customers each and every day.”
The map is a gimmick of a sort and stands in contrast to the endemic challenges the province faces, from inadequate public transit, closing emergency rooms, and a lack of family doctors, to low long-term-care standards and legislated poverty for the disabled, a housing crisis, and more. Upon the launch of the map, more than one observer wondered where such an initiative was when Ontarians were scrambling to find a COVID vaccine in the early days of the inoculation rollout.
I’m a bit of a left-wing heretic on this issue, in a sense. I agree that Ontario has deep problems beyond the availability of alcohol, just as I agree that the province ought to have well-paying, unionized jobs that come with stability and safe working conditions. Yet I oppose a state quasi-monopoly and support opening alcohol sales — even if it costs the province revenue, which, in an ideal world, we’d make up through taxation, since Ontario can’t afford to collect less money; the province needs it to deal with the suite of crises I listed above.
If we were designing a province from scratch and delineating what ought to be state-run enterprises and monopolies, alcohol wouldn’t be far up my list. Power generation would. Insurance would. Tolled roads would. A huge section of the housing market would. But I’m not convinced there’s any inherent reason alcohol should be a state-run affair, nor that they should be taking such a big cut of their sales to industry retailers, like restaurants, that struggle enough to survive as it is. Indeed, I’d much prefer a model in which distillers and breweries were worker-owned affairs, such as co-ops — an industry dominated by smaller, local enterprises like the many we have in Ontario now.
The problem is that, with the current market, we’ll end up with a mixed bag of outcomes at best. We’ll have small businesses making great beer, wine, and spirits. We’ll have the state quasi-monopoly. We’ll also have grocery-store mega-chains leveraging liquor sales to draw us into their ecosystem, collect our data, and gouge us whenever, wherever, and however they can. We’ll have private retailers that sell booze but don’t ensure good, unionized jobs.
The way things stand, we need the LCBO in Ontario. No one ought to trust the Ford government to liberalize alcohol sales without undermining unionized jobs and the stability of the provincial coffers. In short, I can imagine a better model for alcohol sales Ontario, but I can’t imagine the Tories imagining it, let alone wanting it and making it happen.
The upshot of all my concerns — and hedges and caveats — is that I support striking workers at the LCBO and their fight to maintain their jobs and the money they generate for the province. But my support is conditional and contextual, a personal compromise and bargain, as I imagine an alternative system in which the retail and wholesale space is spread out — along with the power that comes with it. But I’m not willing to commit to half a vision with no viability, and I’m certainly not willing to cede the space to the Ford government, whose record of achievement is a record of failure.
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