Wage subsidies for strikebreakers and no premium pay at the LCBO -- Dispatches from the bailouts

Locked out co-op workers picket in January

In yet more evidence that the coronavirus bailouts in Canada are being constructed to heavily favour the interests of big business and the corporations, Unifor is calling out the federal government for a loophole in the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) that allows it to be used to subsidize scab labour. 

There is apparently nothing in the legislation (Bill C-14) that prevents companies from using the wage subsidy of up to $847 per week per employee to hire or contract out for strikebreakers. Using scabs during strikes -- which should be made illegal at all times -- undermines collective bargaining and the power of workers. When profitable corporations can continue to operate during a strike, they have little incentive to bargain in good faith.

Jerry Dias, Unifor National President, said "Companies that have chosen to use scabs to prolong labour disputes should not benefit from the scarce emergency funds designed to help legitimately struggling businesses and organizations. COVID-19 financial support should not be used to weaken workers' bargaining power."

This should be perfectly obvious, but governments are much more interested in keeping the economy going than they are in treating workers fairly.

In its press release Unifor points to:

...the example of Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL) in Saskatchewan, where the company has locked out refinery workers for 144 days and has flown in scab labourers and housed them in cramped conditions. The local community has expressed concern that the scab camp is a health risk during the COVID-19 pandemic.
FCL recently rejected recommendations to end the dispute from independent mediators appointed by the provincial government. Unifor says employers like these can't be rewarded with federal CEWS funds.
"Co-op's repeated refusal to compromise has been made possible by its use of scabs," said Dias. "If those scabs are subsidized with federal CEWS cash, the government will further tip the balance in favour of a company that saw over $2 billion in profits between 2018 and 2019."

Meanwhile in Ontario, despite the publicly owned alcohol retailer the LCBO having been deemed an "essential service" thereby forcing its workers to work under dangerous conditions, LCBO management is refusing calls for a pandemic pay premium.

It was recently announced that frontline healthcare workers would receive a $4.00 an hour wage increase -- long overdue though likely only temporary -- but LCBO workers are not getting any extra pay even though the LCBO is bringing in "record sales" according to the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) that represents them.

In an OPSEU press release:

First Vice-President/Treasurer Eduardo (Eddy) Almeida says the rot at the LCBO starts at the top, pointing out that LCBO President and CEO, Dr. George Soleas, takes home a reported annual salary of $560K plus benefits.
"Mr. Soleas is sitting comfortably in his ivory tower, making record profits off the backs of hardworking employees who are risking their lives," says Almeida. "Since the LCBO has seen a windfall in profits during this pandemic, Soleas and all the other LCBO managers are anticipating hefty bonuses, while all the essential workers get is a sneering brush off."

This is clearly wrong, especially given that the LCBO is public.

Always remember that "We are all in this together" is more rhetoric than reality.

 

Grenfell, the LCBO, Québec Solidaire and more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List June 18 - 25

This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.

This list covers the week of June 18 - June 25. It is generally in order of the date of the article's release.

1) Colin Kaepernick, Philando Castile, and the Lost Wisdom of Roger Goodell’s Father

Dave Zirin, The Nation

The need for radical voices has never been more pressing. Defending voices that are being silenced is a task for all of us.

Read the full article.

2) Two women feared dead in Grenfell Tower were 'threatened with legal action' after questioning fire safety

Samuel Osborne, The Independent

Two women feared dead in the Grenfell Tower tragedy were allegedly threatened with legal action after they campaigned for improved fire safety.

Read the full article.

3) Science is still sexist. I know from my own experience

Kirsty Duncan, The Globe and Mail

When I was teaching at a university, a fellow faculty member shot a question at me during a staff meeting: When did I plan on getting pregnant? On other occasions, I was asked how I wanted to be treated: as a woman or as a scientist. Later, when I asked a university official why I was being paid in the bottom 10th percentile, I was told it was because I was “a woman.”

Read the full article.

4) How human traffickers trap women into domestic servitude

PBS Newshour 

More than three million women are forced into servitude as domestic workers every year, often lured to other countries in the Persian Gulf or Middle East under false pretenses. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports on ways some advocates are working to protect workers, as well as women in low-income countries who may be vulnerable to human traffickers.

Read the full article.

5) LCBO workplace the 'complete opposite' of Ontario's proposed labour laws, say employees

Nick Boisvert, CBC News

With just days to go before a potential strike, employees at the LCBO are blasting the province for alleged mistreatment and accusing Premier Kathleen Wynne's government of hypocrisy over its proposed changes to labour laws.

Read the full article.

6) Canada Leads Attacks on Venezuela to Push ‘Political Agenda’

Telesur

Canada’s foreign policy interests in the region drive its actions against Venezuela, solidarity activist Raul Burbano told teleSUR.

Read the full article.

7) Islamophobia is more than a hate crime – it’s state ideology

Kevin Ovenden, Morning Star

Islamophobia — anti-Muslim racism — is being described on much of the broadcast media as a form of “extremism” or of “hate crime.”

But there is something distinct about Islamophobia. Not distinct in that it is in some way worse to be the victim of anti-Muslim violence compared with, say, anti-gay violence.

It is distinct in that Islamophobia has been central to the policy and legitimising ideology of the again expanding “war on terror” and of every major state and government in Europe and the US.

Read the full article.

8) The Silence of the Lambs

Kathryn Joyce, The New Republic

Are Protestants concealing a Catholic-size sexual abuse scandal?

Read the full article.

9) Quebec poll: Fed by Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois's charm campaign, QS nipping at PQ's heels

Philip Authier, Montreal Gazette

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois continues to shake the political tectonic plates in the province. His Québec solidaire party is now tied with the Parti Québécois in Montreal and within four percentage points of evening the score provincially, a new poll shows.

Read the full article.

10) Ontario Liberals embed 2019 minimum wage hike in new law

Robert Benzie, The Toronto Star

A Progressive Conservative government would be forced to change labour laws in order to derail the $15-an-hour minimum wage increase that takes effect six months after the June 2018 election.

Read the full article.

11) Crazy Marxists want to give homes to Grenfell survivors – thank God we live in a fair capitalist society

Mark Steel, The Independent

Sometimes the terms used in politics, such as Marxism and capitalism, can be confusing. So it was helpful for Tory MPs such as Andrew Bridgen to offer a simple explanation this week. He suggested the proposal of Jeremy Corbyn, that survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire should be housed in properties left empty by speculators, “fits in with his hard Marxist views”.

Read the full article.

12) Outrage as luxury flat residents complain rehomed Grenfell Tower families will lower house prices

Mark Chandler, The Evening Standard

Residents of a luxury housing block have been slammed online after complaining that the arrival of Grenfell Tower survivors will lead to a fall in property prices.

Read the full article.

13) Men Legally Allowed to Finish Sex Even If Woman Revokes Consent, NC Law States

Kimberly Lawson, Broadly Vice

North Carolina is the one state where the law explicitly says you cannot revoke consent once it's given. A bill that would remove this "unacceptable loophole" has little traction.

Read the full article.

14) Socialism Is Back. Is the NDP Listening?

Ira Wells, The Nation

Instead of fighting for the scraps of the political centre, the left can score a victory by returning to its principles.

Read the full article.

15) Tom Mulcair raises red flags after Canadian sniper breaks record in Iraq

 Lee Berthiaume, The Canadian Press

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair is foregoing the celebration and raising red flags following reports that a Canadian sniper in Iraq shattered the world record for the longest confirmed kill.

Read the full article.

16) Controversy over prostitution at Amnesty UK’s AGM

Anna Fisher, Morning Star

A debate is opening up surrounding Amnesty’s pro-pimp policy – but not everyone is willing to allow the full evidence to be discussed. ANNA FISHER reports.

Read the full article.

17) Ministers in abrupt U-turn over fire safety in schools

Toby Helm, The Guardian

Government goes back to drawing board after deciding that cost-cutting rules ‘would have been a disaster’ in light of Grenfell Tower disaster.

Read the full article.

18) Why Grenfell Tower Burned: Regulators Put Cost Before Safety

David Kirkpatrick, Danny Hakim and James Glanz, The New York Times

The doorbell woke Yassin Adam just before 1 a.m. A neighbor was frantically alerting others on the fourth floor of Grenfell Tower about a fire in his apartment. “My fridge blew up,” the man shouted.

Residents of Grenfell Tower had complained for years that the 24-story public housing block invited catastrophe. It lacked fire alarms, sprinklers and a fire escape. It had only a single staircase. And there were concerns about a new aluminum facade that was supposed to improve the building — but was now whisking the flames skyward.

Read the full article.

See also: Grenfell Tower, Theresa May, Philando Castile & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List June 11 - 18

See also: Corbyn, the 'Top 20%' and more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List June 4 - 11

A Modest Proposal: Nationalize The Telecoms!

By A.M.

“Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line.”

As a longtime Rogers customer, I’m accustomed to corporate platitudes like the one above. We’ve all been in a situation where, despite our best efforts, we simply cannot avoid calling customer service. It happens with all sorts of companies, but is particularly frustrating when you’re asking a telecommunications company for help. Maybe you were in the middle of uploading a term paper, and Rogers decided to do some “unscheduled remote maintenance” on your modem (this actually happened to me). Having tried everything, and sitting on the verge of tears, you call Rogers/Bell/Telus, and hear a robot on the other end. Canadians from coast to coast to coast have similar stories of non-functional hardware, unreliable connections, and price gouging. We’ve heard many possible solutions, such as “increasing competition” and “market stabilization” – ideas that seem to be diametrically opposed, but in fact have the same (predictably negative) consequences for customers. I’d like to propose a radically different solution – a public takeover of all telecommunications companies operating in Canada.

Thought it may seem a far-fetched idea, we don’t have to look far for proof of a publicly-owned telecom that not only turns a profit, but is actually an active innovator. SaskTel, a Crown corporation owned by the people of Saskatchewan, takes in $1.2 billion in revenue every year – not bad for a province of just over one million people. These figures are interesting, because SaskTel only has a net profit of $76 million per year. Where does the rest of the revenue go? According to its 2015 fiscal report, SaskTel has spent the past several years upgrading its entire infrastructure (moving away from landlines, for instance). I can think of nothing similar undertaken by Canada’s privately-held telecoms. By placing quality of life over the slavish pursuit of profit, SaskTel is ensuring that Saskatchewan remains a technological innovator. More importantly, it’s providing a service (telecommunications) that essentially is a need in an increasingly technological society.

The most common fairy tale that neo-liberalism likes to tell is that the invisible hand of the free market is all-knowing and wise. SaskTel (along with many other Crown corporations) puts the lie to that notion. Through thoughtful planning – considering how they will deliver a high-quality public service – SaskTel has managed to be a major innovator in the telecommunications industry. Most of us take video-on-demand (on a cable box or website) for granted, and this is a service that SaskTel pioneered in 1988. First large-scale commercial fibre optics network? First offering of HD Internet streaming? Both of these ubiquities are SaskTel innovations. I have no doubt that the private sector would have gotten around to these things at some point, but the upfront costs (particularly in a large and sparsely-populated nation like ours) would never be approved by any corporate Board of Directors. Better to let the allegedly incompetent public sector spend all the money on developing services, prove they can be profitable, and then replicate it. Titans of industry, indeed.

In an increasingly (some might say worryingly) technological society, telecoms have become more and more crucial to living a healthy life. Social media connects us to family and friends, at home and across the planet. We nearly always apply for jobs and schools online. We even use social media to find romantic partners. They may have once been frivolous expenses, but a working cell phone and Internet connection are essentially needs in this economy. Distressingly, Rogers and other telecoms are pricing their devices and services out of reach of those who need them most. My basic phone plan, which allows me unlimited text, thirty call minutes a month, and no data, costs $25. Throw in caller ID (an absolute necessity for those who need to reply quickly to possible job/school admissions offers), and you’re already paying $37/month. Little by little, these prices seem to be rising. SaskTel can do many things, but with its sharply limited marketing possibilities (Saskatchewan only has about one million people,) it will never achieve any sort of economy of scale. A telecommunications monopoly, reaching all thirty-six million Canadians, could drastically reduce or eliminate the need for marginalized people to go without services that allow them to access jobs, education, and, most importantly, a place in the world.

There are, of course, many ways that a total monopoly could go wrong. Aside from government lethargy (which, as we have seen, is actually a grossly over-reported phenomenon), what would stop a future corporatist government from selling off CanTel? Assuming that we managed to elect a leftist government with guts – no mean feat in this country – how would we protect ourselves from a future private monopoly, like the absurdity that is Ontario’s Beer Store?

The Canadian government (meaning the Liberal Party) has a history of creating Crown corporations for purely political reasons, and then quickly selling them off – think Air Canada and Petro-Canada. The only real response that we citizens would have would be to protest and demand that the government hold on to what would be a very valuable asset.

The case for a fully public telecommunications industry is strong, but to ensure real accountability, it would have to look quite different from the Crown corporations we have today. At the LCBO, for instance, the chain-of-command is perfectly straightforward, just like at a fast food restaurant or electronics store. As socialists, our goal with this and other “modern” Crown corporations would be to foster the development of a co-operative commonwealth. So - CanTel ought to be democratically run! Who better to make major decisions about public services than the workers who provide them? While there would be public ownership and oversight of this co-operative, it would be run on the basis of workplace democracy. Certain services could be reinforced in different areas, with changes made in direct response to community needs.

Though it seems far-fetched, entire countries have nationalized their energy resources (a far more contentious battleground) and lived to tell the tale. All we need is a little hard work and foresight.

A.M. is a writer in Toronto

See also: Stop trashing the LCBO!

See also: Why not make Ontario's Beer Store public?

Do you have a "modest proposal",  left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share?


Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!

Racist Memes, Andrew Coyne, the NDP's Disaster & more! -- The Top Ten Posts and the year on The Left Chapter in review

The Left Chapter was launched as a blog at the beginning of February of this year. I wanted to start an eclectic space that presented views, analysis and opinions from a leftist perspective but that also featured recipes, art, fiction and poetry, little bits of whimsy and whatever else it seemed fun or appropriate to feature!

The first year has been a success far beyond expectations in no small part due to the contributions  of several different writers and the feedback of readers and friends.

We have had political blogs about ISIS, the mythology around Naheed Nenshi, the LCBO, the uprising in Baltimore, a call for non-violence, an open letter to Tom Mulcair and an analysis of the the strategy of the peace movement in Canada among many other topics.

There were 323 posts of various types in total!

Today we are going to look at the top ten political posts of the year in terms of hits. (Watch for the top food posts of the year before New Year's Day!)

I want to thank everyone who contributed to the blog and to our readership for such a great launch and I look forward to what 2016 brings.

1) Stop sharing the false -- and racist -- Ontario niqab driver's licence meme

Have you seen this meme circulating around Facebook and the internet the last few days?

It purports to show a woman on an Ontario driver's licence  wearing the niqab -- a religious headdress a very small number of Islamic women in Canada wear and that is being shamefully used by some politicians as a dog-whistle in the current federal election.

Read More! 

2) Reinforcing male privilege -- The Trudeau cabinet, Andrew Coyne and the mythology of "merit"

You really have to love it when the beneficiaries of the greatest social assistance program in the history of Western Civilization and Canada -- the one that did and has rewarded white men for having been born white men since the day the country was founded -- talk about "merit" to bemoan newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's decision to make his cabinet have an equal number of men and women, thereby reflecting the actual gender composition of the country.

Read More! 

3) Delusion continues to rule the day in Mulcair NDP

By Fraser Needham

In the 2015 Canadian federal election campaign that wrapped up earlier this week, the Justin Trudeau led Liberals won a smashing 184-seat majority government.

Perhaps what is most amazing about the Liberal victory is that the party started in third place in terms of both number of seats and in the polls when the campaign began in early August.

Read More!

4) Catastrophe: The NDP lost because it deserved to

It is, ultimately, astounding how facile and false political narratives come back to haunt those who insist on their veracity.

And so it has happened with the "government-in-waiting" liberal led NDP.

Read More!

5) BC NDP posts a meme about "foreign" workers -- Xenophobes show up in approval

There is a wing of the left -- and especially within the mainstream "social democratic" party, the NDP -- that thinks that the path to power is in part paved by pandering to what are traditionally right-wing populist narratives.

Read More!

6) NDP campaign enters panic mode

By Fraser Needham

If in politics a week can be a lifetime, a month can be an eternity – especially in an election campaign.

Just put yourself in the shoes of NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair’s top strategists to see how much things can change over the course of four weeks. On a late August afternoon when members of the Mulcair team looked out on a bright and sunny day from the confines of the NDP war room, they must have been feeling pretty confident about themselves.

Read More!

7) Doubling down on disaster

In the wake of the catastrophic election result for the NDP -- an election that saw the party squander its position as official opposition and "government-in-waiting" and what seemed its first real shot at power -- comes news that the leader who "led" the party there, Tom Mulcair, intends to stay at the helm.

Read More!

8) The NDP's phony “credit card” analogy: a neoliberal conception of the public household

By Matt Fodor

In an attempt to shore up the NDP’s fiscal credibility, Tom Mulcair recruited Andrew Thomson, the fiscally conservative finance minister that served in the NDP provincial government of Lorne Calvert in Saskatchewan.

Read More!

9) Mulcair's NDP ran a great campaign! We know this because they say they did.

By Fraser Needham

It has now been almost three weeks since the NDP suffered a devastating loss in the 2015 federal election and the party remains shell shocked as to what exactly went wrong.

The Liberals are forging ahead on their mandate after winning the party’s first majority government in 15 years. Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named his first cabinet this week with gender parity and significant minority representation. If early signs are any indication, it appears clear the Liberals intend to run a much more open and accessible government than their predecessors.

Read More!

10) Unintended consequences: Attacking Leadnow and "strategic voting"

As I have noted before, partisan political narratives often die very hard -- even when these narratives have begun to do far more harm than good to those who continue to espouse them.

One of these, increasingly, is the fixation by many New Democrat partisans on insisting that they are the only "real" "progressives" (while all the other parliamentary parties are supposedly the "same") as well as on attacking their old nemesis among progressive voters -- the Liberal Party.

Read More!

Thanks again for a great first year. See you in 2016.

Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share?

Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!

Stop trashing the LCBO!

By A.M.

The holidays are just around the corner, which means many different things. Brutal meals with relatives you hate, mountains of credit card debt, and a lot of drinking. For most Canadians, that results in lots and lots of trips to your friendly neighbourhood liquor store. Quebec has its SAQ; Ontario has its LCBO; British Columbia has its Liquor Distribution Branch. To the intense chagrin of most Ontario drinkers (or so it seems), our system of alcohol delivery doesn't appear to be changing in any fundamental way. I want to go a little outside the box here, and give a defense of the publicly-owned liquor store.

Within a ten minute walk from my house, in different directions, there are three LCBO locations. Each store, whether consciously or not, caters to different demographics. One stocks lots of tall cans and coolers (for teenagers, I suppose), one focuses on wine, and the other - a sort of superstore - has loads of craft beer and expensive liquors. This is something that I have yet to see Ontario's private beer monopoly, The Beer Store, attempt to replicate in any noticeable way. And why would it? It's got a lock on the beer market and precisely zero incentive to change.

Whether shopping near my downtown Toronto home, out in the suburbs or deep in rural Ontario, my experience of the LCBO has been overwhelmingly positive. The staff -- while constantly stocking shelves, drawing up orders and handling cashier duties -- is knowledgeable and attentive. Many stores have a resident beer or wine expert on hand -- and sometimes both! Notwithstanding the many times I was refused service for being obviously underage (those were the days!), my feeling is that the LCBO is at least as good at customer service as, say, Best Buy or Loblaw's. Score one for Big Brother.

Much more importantly, the LCBO is one of the last vestiges of reliable, well-paying work in the retail sector. Workers start off there making $14-15/hour, which is unfortunately quite far above Ontario's current minimum wage. This is unheard of in the private retail sector. There are, of course, numerous problems with the LCBO employment practices. Workers can only get permanently hired after working two ‘fixed terms’ at an LCBO store. Those fixed terms are from May-September and mid-November to New Year's. After jumping that hurdle, you can then apply to be considered for a permanent position.

This policy is insanity. It is but one of several nonsensical practices that gets thrown at the wall when ill-informed people trash the LCBO. But really, doesn’t every company engage utterly brutal hiring and firing practices? You can be fired at any point in your first three months of employment at a new job in Ontario, for any reason. It’s almost as if the LCBO is merely reflecting the current neo-liberal trend of precarious work…or maybe it’s simply that the public service is incompetent and we should sell the remnants of it to private interests. That must be it. Privatization, after all, has worked out so extraordinarily well for the average worker over the last thirty years!

And what of public safety? In most discussions surrounding Ontario’s liquor laws, we hear a lot about the rights of consumers to buy alcohol at their local grocery or convenience store. This is not a meaningful goal for any Crown corporation. Simply put, you do not have a ‘right’ to buy alcohol in the same way that you have the right to clean water or nourishing food. Alcohol is a completely extraneous expense, akin to ice cream or a pack of Skittles. For a small and obvious part of the population, it’s a vicious addiction. The LCBO, as part of its social responsibility platform, maintains a commitment to not serve the intoxicated. Absent any sort of meaningful public policy to reduce and eliminate addiction, there is very little the LCBO can do to end the misuse and abuse of alcohol. It does, however, do a pretty good job of keeping alcohol away from the visibly intoxicated. True to form, nearly all commentators and free-market types ignore this vital component of the LCBO.

That and the fact that the LCBO – even considering that it only controls 20% of beer sales – profits the province to the tune of $2 billion annually. This is then used (ostensibly) on social programs, infrastructure and the like.

As for the LCBO's much-discussed retail issues, I can certainly identify a few. First and most obviously are the ridiculous hours of operation. The three LCBO locations nearest to me all have vastly different closing times. Even on a busy Saturday night, like Halloween this year, they were all closed by 10 P.M (and one closed at 8!). It's obviously not the biggest inconvenience in the world to have to buy liquor during the day, at least for me, but many people work weekends and late nights. Especially downtown, many people don't get off of work until after the LCBO closes. Aside from being a stupid idea from the perspective of seeking a profit, this also violates the spirit of the LCBO's emphasis on equity and social access. The LCBO ought to have consistent hours across all of its locations.

It should also have more stores. Liquor is, for better or worse, extremely popular. People in all areas want to drink, and if the LCBO wants to keep Ontarians on its side, it should cater to them more than it does. Many elderly Ontarians, and those with disabilities, cannot walk extended distances to obtain a bottle of wine or a six-pack. I suggest that the LCBO also implement a home delivery system that could be subsidized by its own profits. This could include a Toronto Public Library style "product sharing" program, wherein customers can reserve hard-to-find items at their local store and have it delivered. If it can work for the TPL, it surely can work for another, equally successful public entity!

Minor quibbles aside, Ontarians ought to be very proud of their LCBO. This is a Crown corporation that returns billions of dollars to us every year. It works, however imperfectly, to promote responsible consumption of alcohol. It also provides (relatively) good jobs across the province, with an emphasis on hiring those from marginalized social groups. In these neo-liberal times, we need social ownership more than ever. I encourage you to look past the small convenience of beer and wine in corner stores, and support the LCBO!

A.M. is a writer. 

See also: Why not make Ontario's Beer Store public?

Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share? Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!

Why not make Ontario's Beer Store public?

Ontario's "Beer Store" chain has always been something of a curious anomaly. 

While Ontarians can buy beer at the LCBO (the government owned retail liquor store) and a handful of other retail outlets, the reality is that close to 80% of all beer sales in the province are at the Beer Store, making it a virtual monopoly.

Contrary to what many people believe, however, the Beer Store is not publicly or even Canadian owned. It is owned almost entirely by two large multinational beer corporations with a third owning a small part as well.

There is some dispute as to whether or not the Beer Store itself makes any money (some have claimed it makes as much as $700 million a year in profits) or whether it is simply a revenue neutral distribution mechanism (as the multinational owners claim), but there is little doubt that its private owners benefit from it.

Otherwise why would they so zealously oppose any attempts to infringe on its turf?

The Beer Store can and certainly seems to favour certain beers to the detriment of the province's smaller or craft breweries. It also sells the cases of 24 beers so popular with consumers while the LCBO does not (by agreement).

As one beer blogger put it:

The Beer Store’s 440 outlet stores represent the place where 79% of Ontarians go to buy beer–and for the most part, the beers people are buying at The Beer Store are the brands owned by The Beer Store’s owner breweries. 

Now, none of these breweries will offer up sales figures in relation to their Beer Store sales but consider the sales of the five most popular brands of beer at the province’s other alcohol outlet, the LCBO. The five biggest selling brands of beer in Ontario, all of which are owned by either Molson-Coors or AB InBev, accounted for $193.7 million in sales in 2010, $184.9 million in 2012, and $193.4 million in 2013. And those are just the figures that are available for the LCBO. That is, the place that only sells six packs. Consider what kind of financial windfall is enjoyed by these three big companies when you consider the fact that the store they happen to own (440 of of them to be precise) is the only place in Ontario that you can get beer in larger formats than six packs and is a place essentially custom-designed to tailor to customers who roll in to buy 2-4s of the same beer they’ve been drinking since they were sneaking it from their dads’ fridge in the garage.

As anyone who has shopped in many of these outlets can attest, they are often designed to produce this result, with primarily the best selling beers on the often very "no-frills" retail floor, when there is a retail floor at all, while all the others have to be ordered off of a list on the wall and are hidden away in the storeroom. There can be little doubt the effect this has on sales.

This distribution system should be changed.

The Ontario Liberal government, however, appears to have predictably come up with a plan to do this that will shift beer profits from one group of big corporations to another.

According to reports they may be set to allow beer and wine sales in large supermarkets. while continuing to prohibit sales in smaller grocers and corner stores.

Sadly, this reflects the lack of political imagination and slavish devotion to principles of  private sector dominance that grips our narratives in North America in the neo-liberal era.

Given that the Beer Store jobs are good paying union jobs and that it has an established and very successful recycling program, and given that the Beer Store infrastructure and monopoly lends itself to government ownership and is already in place, why not make it public?

Any money it makes (and it is difficult to believe it turns no profit of any kind and clearly money can be  and is made, all over the world, in the "distribution" of beer and wine in a retail setting) would be added to the government coffers that we are constantly told are cash-strapped. While there would, no doubt, be costs associated with making it public, once done it would continue to generate revenue as long as it remained in public hands.

The LCBO generates in excess of $1.5 billion for the government every year, putting the lie to the notion that only the private sector can make money in retail.

Further, as the government, unlike the big breweries, has no vested interest in promoting specific brands of beer, craft and local beers could be featured on equal footing, as they are at the LCBO, which could only have a positive impact on the Ontario craft brewing industry. Shifting sales to supermarkets is unlikely to do this as they are nearly certain to primarily stock the bigger brands.

While making the Beer Store public would no doubt not please those who seek greater "convenience" in beer and wine sales, the government is not looking at a truly convenience based plan anyway, which would obviously be centered around the many of thousands of appropriately named convenience stores in Ontario.

Ultimately, consumer convenience is not  a meaningful or important social or government policy objective anyway.

Instead of making the Beer Store a publicly owned operation, a seemingly unthinkable idea (not advocated for by any political party in the legislature) in an era where governments in general worship at the alter of corporations and where the government in Ontario may be poised to privatize yet more public utilities, we will instead watch as profits are shifted from one set of powerful private interests to another.

photo via wikimedia commons