Before raising a glass to beer and wine in supermarkets, a question: Is the glass half full or half empty?

Is the government going too far? Or not going fast enough?

Unions warn of chaos and cozy deals. Corner stores are crying in their milk. Wine connoisseurs whine about limited selection. Beer purists complain the Beer Store will still be in business. Distillers want a piece of the action. Environmentalists claim recycling will go down the drain. Everyone dreams of lower prices, and free enterprisers want a free-for-all.

So far, the quintessentially Ontario reaction — fears and fretting about potential pitfalls — is a reminder that you can’t please all the drinkers, doubters, voters and vested interests all the time. No wonder we’ve had to wait nine decades since the end of prohibition for Queen’s Park to move forward.

Politicians tinker with plonk at their peril.

Reforms to wine distribution are especially complicated, and will be only hinted at in next month’s budget — with details on a separate licensing regime for roughly 200 supermarkets to follow. But beer in about 300 grocers will be a centrepiece of the budget and could be rolled out later this year.

It was 30 years ago that the Liberals first campaigned on the promise of beer and wine in corner stores. The Tories made similar noises a decade later.

No one delivered. In retrospect, the time wasn’t right.

Like an old pair of shoes, Ontarians were still comfortable with Canadian-owned Brewers Retail (as the monopoly was then called). Whipping up opposition to change was easier than building a consensus for reform — a perennial truth of politics.

Three decades later, the world of retailing has changed — with supermarkets and big box grocers achieving scale and efficiency. Yet time has stood still at Brewers Retail — where change consisted solely of rebranding itself as the Beer Store on its signage, while the boardroom metamorphosed from domestic ownership to foreign control.

Back in the 1980s, craft beer barely registered. Today, crafts are the fastest-growing segment of the market, generating domestic jobs and economic spin-offs that politicians pay attention to — while the Beer Store (controlled by their giant competitors) treats them as an afterthought.

Public opinion polling shows that as more Ontarians come to realize the Beer Store isn’t government-run — merely a government-authorized, privately-owned distributor controlling nearly 80 per cent of beer sales — they recognize the opportunity for reform. But there are still powerful interests determined to block change:

The UFCW, which represents 6,000 unionized Beer Store workers, has long opposed any dilution of the quasi-monopoly. Now, the union warns beer in grocery stores would hurt teenaged cashiers at the checkout. Fear not: Quebec has figured out how to reassign underage (UFCW) supermarket staff. Can’t Ontario?

The NDP is standing by its UFCW allies (who donated more than $80,000 to them in the last two years). As MPP Gilles Bisson put it recently: “We have a very robust system in this province, the LCBO and our Beer Stores, that do an excellent job providing good access.” New Democrats defending the foreign-owned Beer Store? Hmmm.

Spirits Canada, which represents major distillers, complains bitterly that it has been left out of the mix. But it’s hard to see how Ontario would ever leapfrog Quebec, which has never allowed spirits — with their far higher alcohol content — to be sold outside of the government-owned SAQ monopoly, even when beer and wine got into supermarkets.

Ontario’s convenience stores are upset that Premier Kathleen Wynne has publicly ruled them out for booze sales. The main reason is lack of shelf space. A major motivation for liberalizing sales is to give better display to craft beers, which requires the real estate that smaller stores can’t deliver.

Craft brewers worry they’ll still be squeezed by the Beer Store, which will retain both its storefronts and warehousing operations (for a “franchise fee”). This is the Beer Store’s chance to redeem itself — or be dismantled. Whatever the warehousing challenges, craft brewers will at least get a fairer shake for shelf space from grocers, who aren’t in the kind of conflict of interest that the big brewers are in when dealing with smaller competitors.

Environmentalists insist the Beer Store is our best friend because it takes our bottles back for a deposit refund. They forget the government pays it more than $30 million a year for this service (without competition), and that recycling won’t disappear overnight — just as it hasn’t elsewhere.

Don’t expect dramatically lower prices. The bigger challenge is to avoid any increases from sneaky suppliers. The goals of this reform are to provide a more level playing field for craft brewers and domestic grape growers at the retail level, greater access and convenience for consumers, and higher revenues for government (captured from excess profits) — without raising prices at the counter. Despite earning far higher profits in Ontario than other major markets, the big brewers who own the Beer Store warn of price hikes if the reforms proceed. An opportunity, perhaps, for local craft brewers?

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In the weeks before the budget, there will be pushback. But beware the push for perfection, which is the enemy of the good. Sometimes, it’s hard to take yes for an answer.

Increasingly, opponents will join forces — because the enemy of my enemy is my pal. We may soon see the Canadian Federation of Independent Business on the same side as the UFCW and NDP in resisting change.

Amid the noise, it’s easy to miss the sound of Joe Sixpack, or Mister and Mississauga, saying: “Bottoms up — and put some water in your whine.”