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Ontario is missing out on the chance to have a real, honest-to-God, grown-up discussion about how we sell and buy booze in this province.

Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford has promised to allow beer and wine sales at the corner stores.

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“This is about making life a bit more convenient for you,” Ford said recently.

Absolutely not, responded Kathleen Wynne and Andrea Horwath. The system works fine as it is, they claimed, before throwing in a ‘Oh, and won’t you think of the children?’ for good measure. Specifically, Liberal spokesman Drew Davidson alleged that Ford had “no plan to safeguard against the casual sale to underage teens.”

That’s some stellar fear-mongering for you — the kind you get when a politician doesn’t have a good answer to the question they’ve been asked or a challenge they’ve been issued.

The Liberals, after all, have already allowed beer and wine into grocery stores, which are essentially nothing more than very large corner stores. Convenience stores are already tasked with selling tobacco, and nobody’s bellyaching about teenagers and smokes during this campaign.