Juno News - May 28, 2019


Get government out of beer sales!

Topics
beer store monopoly crisis
Hosted by
Andrew Lawton
Mentioned
Gerard Camot Doug Ford
Another Trudeau tax？ Liberals want to tax your pop Conservatives need to govern like Conservatives

Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

178.74

Word count

709

Sentence count

33

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Never doubt government's ability to ruin a good thing. And when I say good thing, I'm talking about one of the most universally beloved substances in Canada, beer. Yes, beer is something that Canadians have as a source of pride, but it's also mired in bureaucracy and government monopolization, especially in the province of Ontario, where thanks to a sweetheart deal by past provincial governments, giant beer companies have a virtual monopoly on the biggest beer retail operation. It's got a great name, but ultimately speaking, it's a monopoly. And it's this store that has a great say and clout in what beer brands Ontario residents can buy, what prices they pay, when they can shop and where they can buy them.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Never doubt government's ability to ruin a good thing.
00:00:05.000 And when I say good thing, I'm talking about one of the most universally beloved substances in Canada, beer.
00:00:11.000 Yes, beer is something that Canadians have as a source of pride,
00:00:15.000 but it's also mired in bureaucracy and government monopolization,
00:00:19.000 especially in the province of Ontario,
00:00:22.000 where thanks to a sweetheart deal by past provincial governments,
00:00:26.000 giant beer companies have a virtual monopoly on the biggest beer retail operation in the province, the beer store.
00:00:34.000 It's got a great name, it's got some great products, but ultimately speaking, it's a monopoly.
00:00:39.000 And it's this store that restaurants in the province have to go through.
00:00:43.000 It's this store that has a great deal of say and clout in what beer brands Ontario residents can buy,
00:00:49.000 what prices they pay, when they can shop and where.
00:00:53.000 And it is just plain wrong, especially in 2019.
00:00:57.000 Now we've seen little drips and drabs of evolution on this.
00:01:00.000 For example, beer being allowed in some grocery stores under the previous Liberal government,
00:01:06.000 but that was the same government that signed a massive deal with the beer store in the first place,
00:01:11.000 effectively cementing that company's monopoly.
00:01:14.000 Well, the new provincial government under Doug Ford has done away with this.
00:01:18.000 They've introduced legislation that will effectively rip up this contract.
00:01:22.000 And my goodness, the fear mongering in response from these big multi-billion dollar beer companies
00:01:28.000 and the union representing beer store employees.
00:01:31.000 They're saying that thousands and thousands of jobs will be lost, billions of dollars will be lost.
00:01:36.000 Their belief seems to be that if the beer store isn't there as a government monopoly, no one will buy beer.
00:01:43.000 That the entire business model seems to exist because of government.
00:01:47.000 Well, the business model in its current form does, but the great thing about free markets is that
00:01:52.000 when you take government out of the way, anyone has an opportunity to play ball,
00:01:56.000 which means better choices for consumers, better convenience, and better products ultimately.
00:02:02.000 Now, what the beer store is saying here is that its monopoly helps keep prices down.
00:02:07.000 Now, I'm not sure there's a single instance in history when a monopoly has done anything but drive prices up,
00:02:13.000 or at the very least take away choice.
00:02:16.000 But this is a prime example of why governments should never get into these types of deals in the first place.
00:02:21.000 Because now when government is trying to get out of this deal,
00:02:23.000 we have all of these naysayers saying that,
00:02:25.000 oh, but this is going to happen and it's going to cost this much
00:02:28.000 and we're going to have to do this and this will be the impact.
00:02:31.000 Well, yeah, that may be true.
00:02:32.000 It's often not seamless to get out of a bad deal.
00:02:36.000 Governments need to stay out of these bad deals in the first place,
00:02:40.000 which is where we need to look at alcohol liberalization as being one of the key priorities in Canada.
00:02:46.000 Not because alcohol is the top priority for a country,
00:02:49.000 but alcohol is often where we see the greatest examples of needless bureaucracy
00:02:54.000 and age-old antiquated legislation that does nothing for Canadians.
00:02:59.000 Take, for example, the issues you'll have if you want to bring alcohol between one province to another.
00:03:04.000 Gerard Camot is a prime example of this, took his case all the way up to the Supreme Court,
00:03:09.000 which protected provinces' ironclad grip on alcohol importations,
00:03:13.000 despite the constitutional guarantee of free movement between provinces.
00:03:17.000 Look at these massive government liquor operations in provinces from west to east,
00:03:22.000 the LCBO, the SAQ, pretty much every province but Alberta.
00:03:26.000 And yeah, we may be able to celebrate the little victories here and there,
00:03:30.000 such as being able to pick up a bottle of wine at a grocery store.
00:03:33.000 But this doesn't deal with the overwhelming crisis of no choice for Canadian consumers
00:03:39.000 when it comes to alcohol unless government decides to grant the choice. 0.99
00:03:43.000 Canadians are not dumb people. 0.91
00:03:46.000 Let us buy beer, let us buy wine, let us buy spirits, 0.98
00:03:50.000 and for the businesses in the provinces across the country, let them sell it.
00:03:54.000 The sky will not fall.
00:03:56.000 For True North, I'm Andrew Lawton.