Juno News - What Doug Ford’s booze liberation means for Ontarians

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show

00:00:05.900 let's start with something that can unite us all beer now my friend grant dingwall has been in the

00:00:15.300 trenches on this fight for many many years now he founded uh some years back a campaign called

00:00:19.920 free my booze which as the name suggests is the noble calling it's not a call for free booze but

00:00:25.960 it's a call for liberated booze letting alcohol be sold in convenience stores beer and wine and in

00:00:32.760 the ontario context the beer store has this massive massive oligopolis effect that has

00:00:38.780 disadvantaged consumers in more ways well my friend grant is finally getting what he wants

00:00:44.580 premier doug ford has expedited the long plan rollout of beer and wine to convenience stores so

00:00:51.160 i figured we'd have grant on to talk about this uh good to talk to you sir thanks for coming on today

00:00:55.220 thanks so much for having me on so let's let's explain for non-ontarians first off what the 0.98

00:01:01.920 heck is the beer store and why has it had such an outsized influence in the retail market yeah so

00:01:08.580 basically in uh 1927 ontario ditches prohibition the government says we don't know what to do with beer

00:01:17.700 we you know what do we do with this new market and they called on uh the brewers in ontario at the time

00:01:23.200 to start a store and they said you guys can sell beer we'll sell liquor that's how we'll deal with

00:01:27.440 it uh and as time went on those brewers uh didn't let new brewers in they kept ownership themselves

00:01:34.360 and uh those brewers were more and more successful they brought you know they they uh sort of gained

00:01:42.880 their stranglehold stronger and stronger eventually they all got sold to foreign multinational interests

00:01:48.580 uh and then you know here we were in the 2000s with a store that was owned by three multinational

00:01:56.580 breweries uh and it had the unique privileges to sell uh beer to consumers in ontario uh even even

00:02:06.020 privileges over the lcbo so they were allowed to sell six packs and and 24 packs uh but the government

00:02:12.180 run liquor stores weren't allowed to sell those because the beer store had unique privileges

00:02:16.340 whenever the topic of the lcbo and the beer store have come up what's always astonished me is that

00:02:23.380 the arguments in favor of them are just so terrible and and they're so fictitious like the lcbo believes

00:02:30.400 that if you let anyone else sell alcohol uh babies are going to be walking around with bottles of 1.00

00:02:35.400 whiskey and people are going to be getting into car accidents and drunk driving is going to go through

00:02:39.180 the roof like like to use you know pierre polyev's language of the gatekeepers these are people that

00:02:44.220 believe that they must be the gatekeepers of alcohol otherwise all hell will break loose and i've

00:02:49.520 yet to hear a legitimate defense of these things i mean there isn't one right um you know this is how

00:02:57.320 beer is sold everywhere in the world outside uh a handful of u.s states and a handful of canadian

00:03:04.440 provinces uh so i guess to finish the history lesson because i think it's instructive in that respect

00:03:10.700 uh in in 2012 to 2015 sort of in that period uh it came out that the ontario government had signed

00:03:19.820 this hidden deal with the beer store and the details that deal got out and pressure got put on

00:03:26.300 the ontario government to do something so what they did was they signed a 10-year deal with the beer

00:03:32.580 store in 2015 uh that dictated the terms publicly so basically they brought it out of the shadows they

00:03:38.400 said the hidden deal is no more here's a new deal that we're signing for 10 years um and as part of

00:03:44.360 that deal we got beer and wine in 300 grocery stores in ontario no convenience stores those were still taboo

00:03:51.380 uh but we got it in 300 grocery stores and later 450 um but that sort of killed the moral argument right

00:04:00.340 like if these 300 grocery stores are acceptable by the moral police uh then why not the other 3 000

00:04:11.960 grocery stores that existed in ontario right why are these 10 good and the other 3 000 bad and they

00:04:19.680 never had an answer to that and that was sort of that's what put the writing on the wall right that

00:04:23.860 we were eventually going to be successful because the status quo was so nonsensical at that point

00:04:29.980 they'd they'd given up their moral argument so now what i i haven't looked at the comments on youtube

00:04:36.260 which generally speaking uh carry some risks if you do but but when i've talked about this issue in the

00:04:40.740 past it's not uncommon to get some variation of oh sure there are bigger issues to talk about why are

00:04:45.980 you wasting time on this and i i've never liked that because you can walk and shoot gum as a government 0.53

00:04:50.740 and as a as a media enterprise i mean you have to be able to talk about you know war in the middle

00:04:54.760 east and you have to be able to talk about the little things that affect people but but why does 0.95

00:04:58.400 this matter so for me it just mattered because it was so so profoundly stupid right like uh i was 25 0.92

00:05:05.580 and i was bored when i launched free my booze uh but it was for me it was a sign of government 0.98

00:05:12.020 overreach and government stupidity that was just so in our face every day you know uh before we launched

00:05:20.200 free my booze before the the reform started rolling out uh you were unable to buy beer at 6 p.m on a 0.99

00:05:28.620 sunday anywhere in the province there wasn't a single place in this province where you could go and buy a

00:05:32.940 beer at 6 0 1 p.m to take home uh and you know in the middle of summer it's broad daylight you know

00:05:40.340 it's like but but we had all these holdovers from the past uh and they were just uh they were just

00:05:47.300 like annoying for no reason there was no justification we were needlessly inconveniencing

00:05:52.720 consumers needlessly inconveniencing uh businesses you know holding back economic growth 0.96

00:05:59.060 uh for what right so it was just a sign of how stupid things were and it was something that i i 0.97

00:06:07.600 thought we could win uh if if i put my effort into it so now i know that the criticism coming from 0.92

00:06:13.760 these newfound fiscal hawks in the ndp and the liberals in ontario uh are that you know this

00:06:19.100 is going to cost 225 million dollars to do what doug ford is doing here what what's your make on

00:06:24.240 that because they've basically expedited it and there is a cost to that yeah so look i mean ford is

00:06:29.520 doing kind of what i want but not how i want it right uh and that's been that's been true every step

00:06:35.080 of the way on this uh unfortunately i don't get to write all government policy i wish i did

00:06:39.400 i'm sure you you can share that that uh misery um but look from my opinion i i think when ford

00:06:45.940 came in he should have just signed legislation that killed the deal uh there was people that

00:06:49.960 didn't want to do that because they said it's a bad sign to business uh you know for the government

00:06:54.100 to renege on its deals i was of the opinion that uh deals that are signed in bad faith that have

00:07:00.440 no benefit to anyone in the province don't have a reason to exist but they didn't do it they

00:07:05.460 decided to negotiate with the beer store they decided they wanted to work within the legislation

00:07:10.020 work within the law rather than change the law uh so that meant we had to wait until 2026 originally

00:07:17.480 and now they've gone back and negotiated further and said we're going to move this ahead

00:07:22.020 um but unfortunately you know negotiating with a multi-billion dollar conglomerate uh has a price

00:07:30.660 uh and that price is going to be apparently 225 million dollars uh the ndp and liberals are sort

00:07:37.680 of claiming that there's additional costs they're like oh well the wholesale discount is another

00:07:42.980 giveaway to these corporations um and i think most of that is nonsense i mean wholesale pricing

00:07:50.000 exists in every industry of course it's going to exist in alcohol um so they keep trying to throw

00:07:55.440 this billion dollar figure around and i've looked at those numbers and i don't think they hold up

00:07:59.180 uh but yeah there is the cost of 225 million and that's because kathleen wynn the liberal premier

00:08:06.120 signed a 10-year deal uh to excuse the language to screw us uh for 10 years and ford wants to get

00:08:14.260 out of it early um that's where we're at yeah and i think it needs to be pushed back at them say yeah

00:08:20.500 well this only happens because of your party and what your party did so uh this idea that all of a

00:08:25.900 the ontario liberal party cares about uh government spending is a is delightfully quaint for anyone

00:08:30.320 who was around during the uh dalton mcginty kathleen wynn era well uh i know you've been plugging away

00:08:35.280 at this for a while so uh congratulations on the win grant i appreciate your time today thanks so much

00:08:39.940 for having me on thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true

00:08:44.780 north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - June 02, 2024

What Doug Ford’s booze liberation means for Ontarians

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