Juno News - July 13, 2024


Doug Ford stands firm on alcohol sales expansion


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

169.34767

Word Count

1,523

Sentence Count

87


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The LCBO is not a necessary entity in this province. I actually have a photo of Ontarians
00:00:16.980 lining up outside an LCBO I wanted to share with you here. Oh, sorry. No, that's the Soviet bread
00:00:22.600 line. Never mind. Scratch that. I thought I had the LCBO photo there. They're very similar
00:00:26.680 sometimes. David Clement joins us. He is the North American Affairs Manager for the Consumer
00:00:31.780 Choice Center and I would say probably one of the LCBO's biggest critics just as it's a fundamental
00:00:36.860 structure here. David, good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on today. Thank you very much
00:00:41.240 for having me. Let's start off with this $2.5 billion because what Opsu is trying to pretend
00:00:46.840 here is that it's providing this great service to the people of Ontario and we would just not
00:00:52.980 have a functioning society. We wouldn't have a functioning welfare state if it weren't
00:00:57.140 for the LCBO and that is just patently untrue. Yeah, it is untrue. Most people don't realize
00:01:05.620 apparently neither does the union that the dividend the LCBO pays is primarily as the wholesaler.
00:01:15.360 So all alcohol sold in the province, whether it's at a restaurant, whether it's at a grocery
00:01:21.080 store, whether it's at an actual winery that produces the wine, the LCBO tax on their markup.
00:01:29.800 And so if you're at a winery and most people don't know this and kind of the light bulb goes
00:01:34.800 off when I explain this. So if you're at a winery in Niagara, you buy a bottle of wine from that winery,
00:01:41.080 you may often wonder, well, why is the price not better than at the LCBO?
00:01:46.960 Yeah, it was made six feet from here, right? Yeah, it was made six feet from here. It never
00:01:51.040 went into an LCBO warehouse. Well, this doesn't make any sense. It's because the LCBO includes their
00:01:56.400 markup on all alcohol. That's where the revenue to the province comes from. It doesn't matter who sells
00:02:02.480 it. In fact, if alcohol sales were to remain the same during the strike, so Ontarians bought the same
00:02:11.280 amount of alcohol, the revenue to the province would go up, not down. It would go up because when you buy
00:02:19.520 from a grocery store, you're not paying to keep the lights on at the 680 plus retail stores that the
00:02:28.560 LCBO operates. And so the LCBO doesn't have to operate a single retail store in order to generate
00:02:35.680 money. And we already know that this is true because the government had the choice to do exactly
00:02:41.360 that for cannabis and they opted not to. Why? Because it's cheaper and more efficient not to,
00:02:46.880 and it's more responsible for taxpayers in the province as a result. And so we have OPSU behaving as
00:02:55.760 if those who want to get rid of the retail side of the LCBO are talking about some alternative reality
00:03:02.480 that doesn't exist. And they're forgetting that Ontario doesn't have a single storefront retail
00:03:08.880 for alcohol. The province doesn't physically sell a single tobacco product or vape, generate hundreds
00:03:15.520 of millions of dollars off of that. Alberta has exactly the model that I'm talking about in terms of
00:03:23.280 the province has a monopoly on wholesale, but allows for private retailers to sell the alcohol.
00:03:29.040 BC has a mixed model, which is probably what Ontario would look like in transition where you have
00:03:36.800 government stores as well as private retailers existing. And so the idea that we need OPSU to
00:03:42.720 generate the revenue for the province is just completely false. Well, and I'll also make the
00:03:47.040 point here that no one, I mean, you and I are proposing it, but no one in the Ontario government
00:03:50.640 is even proposing abandoning the LCBO retail right now. The issue is allowing convenience stores to sell
00:03:57.520 you know, some ready-made beverages here. Like it actually will not jeopardize the OPSU workers deal
00:04:03.680 at all, except in the sense that it makes consumers aware that, oh yeah, maybe I prefer this. Maybe I
00:04:08.880 prefer to go to this store that I'm already at buying a two liter bottle of Coke and also pick up my white
00:04:13.520 claws there. Yeah, exactly. It's about convenience. And it, it, it may sound trivial to a certain extent,
00:04:21.120 but it actually means quite a bit to be able to go grocery shopping and then pick up whatever,
00:04:28.000 whatever else you might need on the beverage side. Now I wish that the rollout in, in grocery
00:04:34.160 stores and convenience stores was even larger. It should have included spirits as well. It doesn't,
00:04:40.080 the LCBO under the new framework would maintain a monopoly on that. I don't think that they should have
00:04:45.680 that. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, they're holding drinkers in the province ransom now over
00:04:52.320 ready to drink cocktails. And I think most people just see how ridiculous and silly that is.
00:04:57.440 And the arguments are always, anytime there's been a labor dispute,
00:05:02.400 the arguments have always been ridiculous. Like I know in the past, OPSU was really making it seem
00:05:07.040 like they were the answer to drunk driving, that there would be drunk drivers
00:05:10.240 drivers on the streets in large numbers. If LCBO unionized employees were not the ones that got
00:05:16.000 to be the gatekeepers on alcohol purchases. And there's been no evidence to suggest that.
00:05:20.960 And as evidenced by the fact that a convenience store owners, uh, have tremendous penalties if they
00:05:26.640 are caught selling tobacco to minors and LCBO does not that the liquor, the liquor store is not losing
00:05:32.160 its liquor license. Correct. Yeah. The opposite is actually true. And I remember when they ran the campaigns,
00:05:37.840 when this, uh, corner store plan was first thought of when Doug Ford won, um, and there were these
00:05:44.240 really nasty ads that in my opinion touched on some very uncomfortable stereotypes about who runs
00:05:52.240 convenience stores that were really gross. Um, very mega ask in the stereotypical way of like really
00:06:00.880 going after ethnic communities who often operate these, these stores, um, on the, on the premise that
00:06:07.200 they weren't going to be responsible retailers and ID, but all of the secret shopper data actually
00:06:13.520 suggests the opposite is true because they have skin in the game. If they don't ID for age restricted
00:06:18.560 goods, they get fined. Um, if they get caught several times, they lose their ability to sell
00:06:24.480 age restricted goods completely. And that's, I mean, then your business model fails. So they have skin in
00:06:30.000 the game. If an LCBO employee fails to ID, I don't know there are any ramifications at all.
00:06:37.440 No. And I, I used to work for the LCBO and I wrote a column about this and, and, you know,
00:06:42.160 well, there were, you could kind of get a slap on the wrist if you got caught at the end of the day,
00:06:46.880 there was no penalty for it. And certainly the store itself had no penalty or liability for it. And
00:06:52.240 I wanted to ask you about where this is going to go because Ontario consumers are now getting this,
00:06:58.720 you know, propaganda from the union. And I love that they try to make billionaires out to be the
00:07:02.960 bad guys here and not like some small business that wants to open up a wine and liquor store, some
00:07:08.560 independent wine or liquor shop, some independent convenience store owner. Like that to me is also
00:07:13.520 an incredibly disingenuous part of this is that, you know, yeah, there are some corporate profits that
00:07:18.160 are going to do well if Loblaws can sell vodka and whiskey and whatever, but there are a whole bunch of
00:07:23.360 independent small businesses that could open up as well. If we were to have a freer alcohol retail
00:07:28.240 environment in this province. Yeah. It would democratize commerce while generating the same,
00:07:34.240 if not more revenue for the province who would be against that. That, that is, that is the most
00:07:39.840 baffling thing is like, well, why would we want to keep small bit predominantly small businesses out of
00:07:47.680 the game just so that Opsu can maintain its retail monopoly for its LCBO cashiers? That's a bad deal.
00:07:58.000 It's a bad deal for taxpayers and it's a bad deal for consumers because again, this really only matters
00:08:03.520 because they have that monopoly. If they didn't have that monopoly, they would go on strike and
00:08:09.040 the options for consumers, the alternatives for consumers would be endless rather than being very
00:08:15.680 limited. Now, the Ford government did release that map, which is certainly helpful, but it is
00:08:20.960 significantly limited in terms of where you can buy specifically spirits, but I would also say most
00:08:27.120 wines. You're not going to be able to buy most wines at the alternative stores because the LCBO still
00:08:35.280 has the monopoly on where those are sold. David Clement is the North American affairs manager over
00:08:41.760 at the consumer choice center. Great to talk to you, David. Thanks for coming on today. Appreciate it.
00:08:45.600 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at
00:08:51.120 www.tnc.news.
00:08:58.640 .