此为多伦多星报连续三日有关安省啤酒专营专题的最后一篇报道。
BAD BREW DAY 3: ALTERNATIVES
Ontarians thirsty for answers
We’ve been buying at The Beer Store and the LCBO for so long, it seems natural. But there are alternatives
Jul 07, 2008 04:30 AM
Dana Flavelle
Business Reporter
Is there a better way to sell beer?
That’s a question that some corner stores, small brewers and bar owners have asked repeatedly over the years.
Each time, the provincial government, which is responsible for alcohol sales, has said no.
Citing concerns about public health and safety, governments of the day have repeatedly endorsed the current structure.
“It’s much easier for us to maintain security through the (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) and The Beer Store than to give that power to thousands of convenience stores,” Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said on April 3 last year in response to a private member’s bill proposing the sale of beer and wine through corner stores.
When Progressive Conservative leader John Tory raised the idea during last fall’s election campaign of testing corner store sales, McGuinty again backed the current structure.
“It’s really tough if you are under age in Ontario to buy wine or beer or liquor through the LCBO or Beer Store,” the premier said. “It’s a good system.”
On Friday, a spokesperson for Finance Minister Dwight Duncan confirmed that is still the government’s view.
“Ontarians have confidence in The Beer Store and the LCBO to be socially responsible retailers of alcohol. We agree with them and have no plans to change their mandate,” said Steve Erwin, spokesperson for Duncan, who inherited responsibility for the file in a recent cabinet shuffle.
Created in the post-Prohibition era as a brewers’ co-operative, The Beer Store, which accounts for just over 80 per cent of sales in a $2.9 billion market, is now indirectly controlled by some of the world’s biggest brewers. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which accounts for the rest, as well as wine and spirit sales, remains a publicly owned agency.
A blue-ribbon provincial panel three years ago urged the government to break up this duopoly, and license a variety of private sector stores to sell booze.
The Beverage Alcohol System Review panel, headed by John Lacey, a former food industry executive and director of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, recommended sweeping changes, saying tinkering on the margins could make an already “patchwork” system worse.
The panel, which included a member of the Ontario Provincial Police and also commissioned work by the Canadian Association of Mental Health, concluded government could get out of the business of selling booze without compromising the public’s health or safety.
The report, which also looked at wine and spirits, said the government could raise an extra $200 million a year from beer sales alone by auctioning off licences to different retailers, who would compete for the business.
The system would be more open, flexible and convenient for consumers, the panel concluded.
The government could restrict the number of stores and their hours, and also retain the current $24-a-case minimum price, to discourage excessive drinking. And it could focus on enforcing existing laws preventing the sale of booze to minors.
The government said the public wasn’t ready.
Ontario’s convenience store operators say it’s only a matter of time before things will change. A number of other provinces and states have embraced competition without incident, says Dave Bryans, president of the Canadian Convenience Stores Association.
“It’s a much faster moving, more mature society today,” Bryans says. “Is there a political desire? Not in this government.” But, he says, “I believe it will happen. The evolution of retail says it will happen in time because it has happened everywhere else.”
Ontario’s 10,000 convenience stores already handle a number of age-restricted products, including tobacco and fireworks and lottery tickets, Bryans adds. And while a lottery scandal last year – in which some retailers pocketed customers’ winning tickets – hurt the industry, Bryans blamed it on a few bad apples.
Corner stores want a slice of the action to help offset sliding sales of tobacco and junk food.
Bars and hotel owners also want more competition, both so they can sell booze and have more choices where to buy it.
Right now, they have almost no power to negotiate the prices and services they pay even though they are The Beer Store’s biggest customer, says Syd Girling, spokesperson for the Ontario Restaurant Hotel and Motel Association.
Ontario’s smallest brewers say they don’t want corner store sales, which they believe will make it tougher and more expensive for them to get shelf space.
Instead, they’d like to see changes so The Beer Store returns to its roots as a non-profit co-operative in which all brewers have a stake.
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/455326
