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The panel recommends some changes to the way booze is priced and marketed, such as allowing the LCBO to sell 12-packs of beer instead of just six-packs, but it said it would require too much duplication of the Beer Store’s infrastructure to sell cases of 24 at liquor stores.

“Going for half the slice of bread gets you farther than trying to go too far,” Clark said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “For most consumers, if I can get a 12-pack at the LCBO that does me, but if I’m having a party I don’t mind driving over to the Beer Store.”

Selling 12-packs at LCBO stores was like adding another 600 Beer Stores in Ontario when it comes to consumer convenience, added Clark.

For most consumers, if I can get a 12-pack at the LCBO that does me, but if I’m having a party I don’t mind driving over to the Beer Store

The panel’s only recommendation towards privatization is to have Hydro One focus on electricity transmission and get out of the local distribution business, which the panel estimates would bring in up to $3 billion in private investment.

Private-sector capital should be used to change an “unnecessarily cluttered and fragmented” system of more than 70 local electricity distributors to consolidate the sector and make it more efficient, said Clark.

“In the case of Hydro One, there is an opportunity to address a long-term problem in the electrical distribution system — the excessive number of small players,” he said.

The panel also said Ontario Power Generation should split into two entities, with one to focus on the refurbishment of the Darlington nuclear generating station while the other looks after the more “straight forward” hydro-generated electricity business.