With all due respect to my esteemed colleague Steve Paikin, when he argued more than a month ago that Ontario might be headed to an early election — notwithstanding the province’s fixed-election date law — I was pretty dubious. I might not have actually rolled my eyes, but my instinct is to assume that Canadian politics rarely gets as interesting as it could and that, while an early election was theoretically possible, it’s also the case that journalists sometimes jump at signs and portents that don’t actually signify that much.
That changed last Friday with the government’s beer and wine announcement, for a very specific reason. So first of all: mea culpa to Steve. I think he got this one right, and my skepticism led me astray. On this week’s #onpoli podcast, I promised to give him a box of economical gas-station wine if and when the legislature is dissolved next year.
It was not the fact of the government’s announcement itself that made me reconsider my priors or even, honestly, the premier’s refusal to commit to the scheduled election day of June 2026. Doug Ford would not be the first premier simply to try to make his opponents second-guess his plans, even if he ended up eventually adhering to the spirit of the law.
No, it was a specific clause in the “Early Implementation Agreement” between the Ontario government and the Beer Store, whose owners are foreign-owned multinational brewers. The EIA is the contract that’s providing these brewers with hundreds of millions of dollars to end the status quo 18 months early — precisely how many hundreds of millions of dollars has been a matter of some debate this week.
Section 6 of the EIA details the Beer Store’s obligations and privileges specifically for its retail stores and indicates it’ll be allowed to continue selling beer from its current locations until at least 2033, despite losing its privileged position in Ontario alcohol marketplace. It also initially commits the Beer Store (TBS, in the language of the contract) to keeping at least 300 stores open across Ontario to help ease the transition away from the existing deposit-return scheme for alcohol bottles and cans.
But the Beer Store’s obligation doesn’t last very long: further down, 6 (d) says of the retailer: “From and after January 1, 2026, TBS shall be entitled to close any retail locations as determined by TBS in its sole and absolute discretion.”
I’m not a contract lawyer, but I can read a calendar. And when I saw that clause in the EIA, my thinking about the timing of the next election changed instantly. Section 6 does two things: it minimizes any big public layoffs by the Beer Store until New Year’s Day 2026 — but it also gives the Beer Store carte blanche thereafter to close locations and lay off workers.
From an economic perspective, job losses are regrettable but not lethal: Ontario’s economy is much bigger than the brewery sector, and Ontario’s beer sector is bigger than the front-line retail workers at the Beer Store.
Will Doug Ford call an early election?
From a political perspective, however, it would be a huge blow to the Ford government’s re-election bid if the most public and visible impact of its changes to alcohol retail in this province were a wave of closures and layoffs right before it has to ask voters to re-elect it to a third consecutive majority.
That alone doesn’t determine the precise timing of an election, but we can narrow down the error bars of our political estimations for the next year or so. Ford, in a radio interview this week, ruled out an election this summer or fall. That’s not terribly surprising, as the government does still have agenda items it wants to pass before this legislature is dissolved. A winter election is theoretically possible, but a spring election would afford the government the opportunity to run once again on a big splashy budget, perhaps with a throne speech thrown in for good measure. The start of the next year’s construction season will undoubtedly involve a ceremonial groundbreaking for Highway 413. In any case, Ford and his party will want to settle Ontario politics before money and people start getting sucked away into the vortex of federal politics ahead of that election, which must be held no later than fall 2026.
After the votes are counted, two things can happen: either the future of Beer Store workers will be someone else’s problem or the closures and layoffs that occur will happen early enough in a new mandate that the PCs will be able to put some distance between any unpleasantness and the next time they have to ask voters for their confidence — whenever that might be.
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