As the years pass, I grow strangely fond of Dalton McGuinty. At 9 p.m. my heart leaps up, and so do I. “It’s McGuinty Time!” I cry, and I turn on the dishwasher, the washing machine, and the chargers for the toothbrush, iPhone and Roomba. Our premier’s off-peak electricity pricing has started.

I often think of the man as the devices hum and slosh. Who is he and how did he become part of my private life? Yet I never call him by his first name, the way I do my mailman (Joe) and the UPS guy (Mark) and the garbageman (Sir).

I have warm feelings for my friend McGuinty today, who is holding public consultations on tailgate parties and whether Ontarians should be allowed to walk around with a glass of warm wine in a plastic cup at public events, instead of being herded into the beer tent. I say yes to that.

But he has made me proud in holding firm on liquor taxes, even as businesses demand to be allowed to buy bulk booze at huge discounts. For what purpose? The resort industry wants to build all-inclusive Caribbean-style resorts in Ontario, the linchpin of which is unlimited liquor with the all-you-can-eat buffet.

It isn’t just heat that draws Canadians to Mexico and the Caribbean, it’s the short flights, cheap rooms and vast quantities of untaxed ingestibles favoured by chunky alcoholics. And, let’s be honest, it’s the desperate locals who’ll work cheap, serving you drinks, cleaning your tub and sweeping sand off your giant lounge chairs in hope of a tip. Cheap, cheap, cheap, it’s PC Leader Tim Hudak’s fantasy future.

But a civilized Ontario is built on taxes, not the quiet federal income taxes that cleverly rise automatically by stealth, but on the numbers you see itemized on your hotel and restaurant bills. I dislike consumption taxes —they hit the poor hardest — but they keep the province livable.

I’m looking at a bill from a local restaurant on a rare night out. Two prix fixe meals at $25 each. A pint of Okanagan beer for $6.80 and two glasses of Merlot (for me) at $8 each, already subjected to the Federal Excise Tax and whatever the restaurant has added to the LCBO price. Then there are two HST hits on the bill, apparently a 5 per cent food and another 8 per cent food, plus a 13 per cent HST liquor tax of $2.96.

So a glass of wine cost me $9.04. I’m told I should hate that it came close to costing what an entire bottle of the Ontario wine we drink at home would cost. I guess I care. But I clearly don’t because I said the hell with it and ordered another glass.

This is a good thing. When I first arrived in Toronto, you had to go to a liquor store and write “big Bacardi” on a paper slip with a pen manacled to the counter and give it to a dead-eyed man who trudged into a warehouse and brought out the bottle.

Now I can stare at a wall of Prosecco and make my choice, load it up in grocery carts if I wish. I like modernity. The more frivolous I am, the more money for libraries and hospitals, for traffic lights and schoolbooks.

McGuinty needs taxes so badly that he’s allowing bloody Extreme Fighting matches. I wish he wouldn’t and I hope he won’t lower liquor taxes. I don’t want booze so cheap that people can go to all-inclusive Ontario resorts run by private operators where the small-town poor will be paid in nickels to bring you tiny bottles of shampoo.

I pay taxes to support Ontario. I’m not crazy about it. But I wait for McGuinty Time so my electricity bill will shrink to the point that I can go and blow whatever I saved on something that eases the rub of the day on my nerves.

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It’s not a bad bargain when you think about it.

hmallick@thestar.ca

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