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The LCBO as a model? I was skimming its 2015/16 annual report, a 104-page gripper I’m sure cost nothing to produce. It listed 10 vice-presidents. It did not list the names of 8,000 in-store employees, most of them casual, some of whom earn close to $27 an hour to put wine in a bag.

That year, it cost $874 million in total expenses to run the LCBO, a scandalous sum lost in the vast billions that liquor brings in and the annual premium it sends to the province ($2 billion, give or take).

(Under “divisional expenses,” there was an entry for $122 million for “administrative” work, plus $43 million for sales and marketing and $31 million for logistics. The noodle boggles.)

For our own safety, no doubt, the LCBO reported it did 633,000 “quality assurance lab tests” in one year, for which there must be a whole department, with staff and supervisors and directors and barons and earls. Lord only knows how they’ll test truckloads of weed to be smoked by our kids.

You know, life was so much simpler when the mob and bikers ran marijuana.

So, the point is an old one, like the story of the $1.99 hammer that costs $59.99 after nine departments and six committees, in two languages, decide it is an appropriate device to strike nails. The government, not driven by a profit motive, is bad at selling and buying things.

Already, the first 40 stores — we’re guessing Ottawa gets three or four — sound silly. There will be no self-service and the products will not be “visible” to youth, instead in some kind of behind-the-counter setting. It being the government, the stores won’t be junky, but high-end, full of security devices and vaults and probably cost the Earth to lease or build.