Beer — but by no means buck-a-beer — is coming soon to a corner store near you.

Thanks to Premier Doug Ford, big changes are in store for Ontario’s small neighbourhood grocers. After clamouring for years to get a piece of the pie, they are about to get their cut.

Ford has just appointed a longtime Alberta politician to brainstorm how to blow up our beer and wine distribution system: Ken Hughes, a one-time minister in Alberta’s Progressive Conservative government, will bring that province’s perspective to Ontario.

Who knew that “Ontario’s First Government for the People” would be guided by Alberta’s playbook? Ford long ago aligned himself with Alberta’s right-wing premier-in-waiting, Jason Kenney, on carbon pricing, but are Ontarians ready to import Alberta’s approach to alcohol pricing next?

Alberta has led the way in taking the government entirely out of alcohol retailing. Other provinces rely on a mix of private and public distribution to serve customers, while maximizing revenues for government — the better to bankroll other government services, notably health care and education.

Ontario has its own peculiar history of public-private alcohol distribution, but the bottom line is that the LCBO delivers a $2 billion dividend annually to its shareholder — the government (for the people). Past columns have documented the Beer Store’s bizarre duopoly with the LCBO that dominated retailing, despite promises from both Liberals (1985) and Tories (1995) to let corner stores in on the action.

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It fell to Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals to finally break the stranglehold of the foreign-owned Beer Store in 2015, inviting up to 450 of the province’s more enterprising supermarkets to compete on both scale and service. Corner stores, left out of the mix because of their smaller shelf space and higher cost structure, cried foul.

Now, Ford is lending them an ear. And beer is coming to any and every small grocer that wants in.

But here’s the inconvenient truth about convenience stores: They aren’t what they used to be.

Back in the 1980s, corner stores were a bigger player in retailing. Today, they have been largely overtaken by big box stores and ubiquitous supermarkets that deliver big economies of scale with razor-thin margins.

Corner stores are languishing, more reliant than ever on lottery sales to make up for declining tobacco revenues. Beer is their last big play, but will it really help the province’s fortunes?

Before Ford turned to an Albertan and fellow PC to redraw this province’s retail map, the previous Liberal government hired a non-partisan retail expert to reinvent the booze business in Ontario: Former TD Bank CEO Ed Clark served as the government’s dollar-a-year man, negotiating in 2015 with the Beer Store and wineries to loosen their grip while enriching the provincial treasury.

He forced supermarkets to bid for licenses to sell beer, with the profits going to the province. If the big chains sell more than anticipated, they must pay more, leaving more for us. Put another way, our dollar-a-year-man squeezed every last dollar out of the supermarket sector, instead of giving away market share, while keeping average prices among the lowest in Canada.

How would small corner stores, already crowded with condiments and staples, find the shelf space to display Ontario’s prestigious craft beer selections? Supermarkets are surely better placed to cope with that juggling act, while giving the Beer Store a run for its money.

In Alberta, by contrast, sales are slumping. Statistics Canada revealed last year that while wine and beer sales increased by 2.3 per cent across the country, they dropped by 3.4 per cent in Alberta — thanks to a 6 per cent plunge in beer purchases (in the fiscal year ending March 2017). Alberta’s happy hour turned into a year-long slump.

But it gets worse. What Ford won’t tell you is that blowing up the “Master Framework Agreement” for beer, painstakingly negotiated by Clark with the big brewers four years ago, would expose the province to hundreds of millions of dollars in legal claims. The 10-year beer deal, which started Ontario along the road to a phased transition from an outdated duopoly to cutting-edge competition with supermarkets, leaves the government on the hook for compensation — no matter how much Ford’s Tories pretend the crown can tear up signed contracts with impunity.

Remember Ford’s buck-a-beer promise, which fizzled faster than a political bumper sticker fades in the desert sun? Turns out no brewer can sustain beer production at that price point, because “buck-a-beer” is a relic from a decade ago with little relevance today.

Similarly, the old corner store campaign pledges first made in the 1980s and 1990s are outdated today. Our teetotalling premier likes to get punch drunk on power, but not even Ford can rewrite the laws of the land, or the laws of economics.

Remember the premier’s promise to fire the “Six Million Dollar Man,” without paying a penny more? Never mind the $130 million in penalties facing Hydro One ever since he blew it up.

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For all of Ford’s folly, he has done one thing right. The government has authorized the Beer Store, LCBO, and supermarkets to extend their opening hours up until 11 p.m. daily — probably the most cost-effective way to truly increase convenience without paying a price for future litigation.

Far better for Ford to declare victory with his sensible tweak to opening hours, while shutting shut down his ill-conceived convenience stores gambit. And go back to boasting about the buck-a-beer bumper sticker that never was and never will be.

Correction — March 26, 2019: A reader survey that was inserted into this column stated incorrectly that beer is sold in corner stores in Alberta. The survey has been removed.

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