Doug Ford can feel the heat.

He can also sense the thirst. For he can see a hunger in the land for beer in a corner store near you.

Now, the premier who proclaimed himself leader of “Ontario’s First Government For the People” has a revolutionary plan. A Five Year Plan.

It begins with a bit of Bolshevism — by blowing the Beer Store out of the water.

Ford’s Tories will pass a law this month cancelling a signed contract between the crown and the Beer Store’s owners — condemned as a “sweetheart deal” with foreign-owned multinationals. His Progressive Conservative government shall pass legislation for cancellation without compensation, using its supreme powers to absolve Ontario of any liability in a court of law.

Confiscatory legislation invites litigation, so we may yet pay the price — estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. But the revolution demands sacrifices.

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And for a politician drunk on power, why stop there? If the premier’s “Open for Business” slogan can be suspended for the Beer Store, why not cancel other debilitating deals with foreigners?

Few of us imagined the pro-business Tories as Trotskyites in disguise. But Ford Nation’s nationalization of big bad capitalists, foreign or domestic, seems like the logical next step.

And so we offer our Progressive Conservative comrades these Top Five Targets for any Five Year Plan based on the Dictatorship of the Proletariat:

The sweetest of sweetheart deals is of course the 99-year Hwy. 407 lease signed by a previous PC government for $3.1 billion, now valued at about $28 billion thanks to the milking of commuters over time, much of it by foreign owners who profited lavishly. Ford has condemned the deal, so why not cancel it? If ever there were a case of capitalist extortion meriting expropriation, thanks to Tory stupidity, the 407 fits the bill.

The deal that still sucks our blood is the $350 billion in debt bequeathed by previous governments (PC governments too, but never mind). Much of that money is owed to foreigners — all the more reason to default on that debt, wipe it off the books and turn the page. Wait — you worry that no one will never lend to us again? Ah, but Ford Nation need not ever borrow in future, because it doesn’t do deficits, right?

Tories tried to sell off the old Ontario Hydro two decades ago, but subsequently — and mischievously — opposed the Liberals for privatizing a chunk of it (the utility’s transmission offshoot, Hydro One). Remember when Ford promised to fire its “Six Million Dollar Man” CEO without severance, triggering a chain reaction that cost the company more than $130 million? Here’s our chance to recoup that loss: Re-nationalize Hydro One without compensation.

When the Liberals had second thoughts about those gas-fired power plants in Oakville and Mississauga, the cancellation and relocation added up to a billion-dollar boondoggle. If Ford is so willing to use his legislative power, why not cancel all those long-term contracts that offered compensation for the original power contracts?

Buck-a-beer is surely no small beer at a time of sweeping budget cuts to education, health care and social services. Ford’s populist campaign pledge has come back to haunt him — promise made, promise fizzled — because most brewers didn’t go along for long. Rather than merely reduce the minimum floor price of beer to a buck, and bribe small brewers with promotional inducements, it’s time to impose strict price controls. As Ford keeps reminding us, the legislature is supreme — free markets be damned. Impose a maximum price of $1 each — no HST, because Tories can’t be against tax holidays.

Sound radical? Perhaps so, but nothing in the above Top Five Targets is any different, in principle or in practice, from ripping up a signed contract with the Beer Store.

Past columns have crusaded against the Stalinist-style retail ambience of its aging outlets. There is a difference, however, between Stalinist ambience and Leninist ambitions.

Only Ford could make Ontarians defend the Beer Store (even me) against expropriation, because most grown-ups understand that in the real world, a deal is a deal. That “sweetheart deal” (negotiated in good faith by the crown, through its rather savvy business adviser, ex-TD Bank CEO Ed Clark) broke the stranglehold of the big brewers for the first time in nine decades: 450 new retail locations were added in supermarkets, on top of 660 LCBO locations, 210 agency outlets and 450 existing Beer Stores, over a transitional 10-year period that expires, if only Ford can wait, in 2025.

But no, beer in corner stores must come now, contracts be damned. If the NDP or Liberals tried such a stunt (starting with cancelling green energy contracts last year), Progressive Conservatives would rise up against so gratuitous a distortion of due process.

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Why the belated Bolshevism?

Ford has become Ontario’s unpopular populist — an oxymoron in the premier’s office. With the popularity of his “Government For the People” plunging so fast among the people, desperation begets expropriation.

Cheers, Comrades.

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