Article content continued

The PC plan is not one that will greatly undermine the LCBO. The provincial liquor stores are not going away, nor should they. In many respects, they do a good job and they will be tough for new players to compete against. Then there is the $2.1 billion dividend the liquor company pays to the government. That’s not something it can afford to write off.

The government can do what it likes with the LCBO, since it owns the company, but the Beer Store is a different matter. In 2015, the Liberal government signed a stunningly bad deal with the beer barons, guaranteeing them that competition would be limited to the planned grocery store expansion for a 10-year period. In exchange, the beer retailer agreed to spend $100 million sprucing up its own stores, something it surely should have done anyway. Don’t go looking for the public value in that deal.

It’s really something to think that any provincial government would grant a monopoly to any corporate group, much less one that is foreign-owned. Canada’s big brewers are all part of international conglomerates now.

That beer deal is the one big roadblock that could prevent the Ford government from fully modernizing beer retailing. The government hasn’t said how it would get out of the deal and the Beer Store has been pretty quiet, too.

The brewers seem to be in a position to play hardball. There is only one problem: they are retailers in an industry with declining sales, one that spends millions of dollars every year trying to persuade consumers to like their companies and their products. Angrily demanding the continuation of a retail near-monopoly wouldn’t do much for their public image.

Imagine if the last provincial government had made a deal that gave Ford, GM and Chrysler exclusive rights to sell cars in Ontario, in exchange for making their dealerships look nicer. That’s pretty much what they did with beer.

The beer deal in indefensible, except in the courts. If the big brewers are smart, they will get with the program and compete on their merits.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa political commentator and former Ontario PC candidate. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com