Well, isn’t this just great. On the last day of the year, Ontario’s Finance Minister Dwight Duncan drops the biggest boneheaded plan ever into the laps of consumers.
In total defiance of what just about everyone in the Ontario wine industry has told him, he thinks he’s solved all the problems of better access to beer, wines and spirits in this province by announcing the government will put booze kiosks in some grocery stores.
They will be little mini “express” LCBO stores where you can pick up a six-pack or a cheap bottle of plonk especially chosen for you by the same people who already do all your shopping at the government monopoly Liquor Control Board of Ontario.
Oh, great. Just great.
This is why we elect politicians: to totally ignore what people want and to actually make things worse.
Why don’t you get it, Dwight Duncan? Why is it so hard for you to understand that you are trying to fix the problem with THE problem.
The big white elephant in the room is the LCBO, you know, the Control part of the LCBO. We cannot grow with you (your government) controlling what we can buy, what the good people in the Ontario wine industry can sell (and, in fact, what the professional wine agents can sell from around the world), and where they can buy it. It just doesn’t work. The system you have created out of the ashes of Prohibition just doesn’t work in modern society. You have to let go of your ill-conceived notion that adults can’t decide on their own what they what and where to buy it.
You, Mr. Duncan, and your government, will be the last dinosaur on earth to relinquish your stranglehold on the control of the evil liquor.
And, frankly, your newest plan to hang on to the control of liquor/wine sales sucks. Really sucks.
“We think this is an important step forward,” said Duncan, as reported in the Toronto Star. “I think consumers will embrace this.”
His ill-thought plan is to put little booze kiosks, run by the LCBO, inside key grocery stores in suburban and rural areas now under-serviced by liquor stores.
And then he spewed out this laugher:
“We’ve done a lot of work on what people like and don’t like about LCBO stores,” he told the Star. “They’re satisfied with what the LCBO does but they want more access. I think this is going to revolutionize how the LCBO operates.”
Really? Are you serious? I don’t know anyone who’s satisfied with the LCBO. I don’t know who you are talking to but it’s not the people I talk to.
I love this tweet from Duncan:
@DwightDuncan New #LCBO store formats + expansion plan will contribute increased revenue to eliminate deficit and protect health care + education #onpoli
That old government shtick. Buying booze at the LCBO builds hospitals and pays down the deficit. A big pile of hooey. The taxes on booze, set by the government and returned to government no matter where your booze is purchased, pay for hospitals. The profits go to building more mega-LCBO stores that can be built cheaper — and run better — by private enterprise.
And this tweet from an obviously delusional Duncan:
@DwightDuncan #Ontario gov’t launching #LCBO Express stores and #VQA Destination Boutiques – more convenient and will grow Ontario’s wine industry #onpoli
Grow Ontario’s wine industry? Seriously?
The Ontario wine industry has spoken clearly on this issue as a united force through the Ontario Wine Council’s #MyWineShop campaign, urging you, pleading with you, to partially privatize the booze business in Ontario by allowing licences to be issued for the sale of wine in private shops (both Ontario and international wines) with the selection totally in the hands of people who know what they are doing.
This is what they say is best for them. Why do you not listen to them?
Your plan is just a mini version of what we already have. The same wines you choose to sell now for sale at more places.
The problem is access to Ontario wine selection, the vast majority of which in not available to Ontario consumers because the LCBO does a very poor job at picking wines we want to buy and, in fact, force wineries to make the kind of homogenized multi-blends with fanciful labels that the LCBO thinks people want.
Putting wine choice into the hands of private enterprise, like most of the free world does, is what the Ontario wine industry wants and has told Duncan this. Why he thinks selling more of the same old stuff at Zehrs and No Frills is moving forward is beyond my comprehension.
You get the feeling Duncan set this whole cockamamie scheme in motion to poke Conservative leader Tim Hudak in the eye over his proposal to sell beer and wine in corner stores.
He mentioned Hudak’s plan in announcing his grocery store model, charging it would lead to Detroit-style “party stores. Anyone who lives near the border knows what that will look like,” he told the Star.
I’m not crazy about Hudak’s idea either, I just can’t see how that will help anyone other than late-night partiers who have run out beer.
But the point is, both sides of the government are lost and need our help finding their way.
The answer lies in listening to the people, not YOUR people who exist in YOUR world at Queen’s Park, the real people who are hurting and can’t sell their wine because the LCBO doesn’t like the label or their personality.
Retail belongs to hard-working Ontarians who know what they are doing, respond to the wants and needs of their customers and can run a business efficiently and effectively.
You, Mr. Duncan, have proven you cannot do that.
Change, the right change, is what we need.
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