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Mon
Jan
31/05
Bottle
of smoke
Both
the SAQ and the LCBO
(Quebec's and Ontario's government bottle shops, for
international readers and lesser Canadians) run fairly tight
ships. Thanks to their reasonable selection (in urban areas,
anyway), decent and consistent prices, and surprisingly
knowledgeable staff, it often takes something drastic to bring
the ideological problems behind government- controlled liquor
sales into sharp focus. If I still lived in Quebec, the
SAQ strike — in which, most notably, retail workers are
demanding that they not be forced to work
both Saturdays and Sundays — would have done the trick
nicely. In British Columbia, paying an outrageous premium for cold
beer and wine (and, after 6pm, for everything) got my blood to
boiling. In the end, though, it finally all fell apart in
Toronto one August afternoon in 2003.
It
had not been such a good day. It was stinking hot, for starters,
and there had been manual labour, profuse sweating, a dead
battery, a flat tire, and, thanks to the Great
Blackout of 2003 that struck that afternoon, about two hours
of stop-and-go driving. And then, having made it back to
civilization, there was 50 minutes of cycling, mostly uphill. I
needed provisions, but at the
Beer Store, a blithely handwritten sign on the inside of the
door read: "Closed — no power!" The message was the
same across the street at the LCBO: because there is no
electricity, we cannot sell you alcohol. Because profits are not
a day-to-day issue at the LCBO or the Beer Store, their
employees went skipping merrily home — the monopoly's take on
a snow day.
Speaking
of which, one night in Montreal, during the Great
Ice Storm of 1998, I lost a complicated dice game and was
sent stumbling about the McGill Ghetto, in pitch darkness, in
search of beer. It wasn't pleasant, but the mission was
accomplished. I'd very much like that to be possible in advance
of whatever urban cataclysm strikes Toronto next, and indeed the
Ontario Government has been
making noises to this effect. Not surprisingly, Beer Store
and LCBO principals are scrambling for purchase:
Jeff
Newton, president and CEO of Brewers of Canada… emphasized
that while beer is sold in some 17,000 to 18,000 Quebec corner
stores — or dépanneurs — it is more expensive there than in
Ontario.
"The
cost of that retail system is substantially higher than in the
Beer Store. Does it have elements of greater access? Sure, but
there's a cost to that," said Newton.
That's
well played, Jeff, but it's not exactly true. In Quebec, beer
from the dep is usually more expensive than beer from the Beer
Store in Ontario, but beer from your local supermarket is always
considerably cheaper than beer from the dep. (Such is the case
in Ontario for toilet paper, bread, canned beans... actually,
for every consumer good that doesn't contain the demon alcohol.)
At my last address in Montreal, I had access to beer at my
friendly neighbourhood dep — about 40 seconds' walk. That cost
perhaps 15 percent more than the next cheapest option, namely, a
six-minute stroll to my local Quatre Frères supermarket — an
altogether horrible place (occasionally they used to sell
"irregular" eggs, and I mean irregular, at a deep, and I mean deep, discount) that nonetheless offered reasonably priced beer. And
if I felt a particularly bad few days coming on, I'd hop in the
auto and go to Loblaws, where 24 delicious Boréale Rousse went
for the same or less than you'd pay in Ontario for a two-four of
Canadian.
Three
years later, my Montreal correspondent confirms the phenomenon.
Around the holidays, 24 bottles of domestic beer from the Métro
on Victoria Avenue went for the super-terrific special low price
of $26.55, or roughly $9 cheaper than in Ontario. By the time I
commissioned the research it had risen to $34.60, which is still
a buck less than at my not-so-local monopoly. And local really
is the heart of the matter. Call me spoiled, but I have had it
up to here with the 1.8 km round trip to my nearest Beer Store.
Don't even get me started on the 3.4 km round trip to my nearest
LCBO, whose selection seems geared mostly towards upwardly
mobile winos. (Do we really need two
sizes of Baby Duck?)
Forces
are working against me. The Star saw fit to publish this
unsubstantiated prohibitionist nonsense from Dr Garry
Aslanyan last week:
More
private retailers pushing product would boost sales to youth and
increase overall consumption, leading to greater public harm. As
for convenience, it may indeed
be handy to grab a bottle at a corner store on the way to a late
party but you might encounter a drunk driver on the road who has
enjoyed the same easy access.
First
of all, the current system is not perfect. This past Friday
night I saw the conscientious staff at a North Toronto Beer
Store send a young man with a "borrowed" driver's
license packing. Not 15 minutes later I saw him strut out of a
nearby North Toronto LCBO, well provisioned for a night in an
opulent North Toronto basement. We fine convenience stores who
sell cigarettes to minors; we can do the same for alcohol.
Moreover, I humbly suggest that allowing convenience stores to
sell beer until a set time — say, 11pm — will result, if
anything, in fewer drivers weaving to and from their
last-minute purchases. As it stands, Beer Stores and LCBO
outlets in Toronto close as early as 6pm and as late as 11pm;
standardizing the availability across the city might very well
cut down on alcohol-related travel.
In
the end, the only evidence Aslanyan offers for any of his
assertions is this:
-contact-
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