Liquor

Saturday September 9, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday September 9, 2017

LCBO to run 150 marijuana stores

Premier Kathleen Wynne is cornering Ontario’s recreational marijuana market by restricting sales to 150 LCBO-run stores.

June 20, 2017

The standalone cannabis outlets, separate from provincially owned liquor stores, and a government-controlled website will be the only place weed can lawfully be sold after Ottawa legalizes it on July 1.

In a move that will close scores of illegal “dispensaries” that now dot Ontario cities, the LCBO will get its product from the medical marijuana producers licenced by Health Canada.

Only those 19 and older will be allowed to purchase or possess marijuana and pot consumption will be limited to private homes.

Smoking weed will continue to be illegal in any public space, including parks, workplaces and motorized vehicles.

Prices will be kept competitive to curb the black market.

November 27, 2015

The government expects a boost in tax revenues.

Finance Minister Charles Sousa, Attorney General Yasir Naqvi, and Health Minister Eric Hoskins unveiled the plan Friday at Queen’s Park after months of work from Ontario’s cannabis secretariat.

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which runs the province’s 651 liquor stores, using workers who are members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, will oversee all retail sales and run the online service.

But the branding of the government’s new pot chain will not necessarily include the LCBO’s name.

September 24, 2015

“When it comes to retail distribution, the LCBO has the expertise, the experience and the insight, to ensure careful control of cannabis, to help us discourage illicit market activity and see that illegal dispensaries are shut down,” said Sousa, who has not yet determined how much tax revenue legalized weed will bring in.

Naqvi said the government has “heard people across Ontario are anxious about the federal legalization of cannabis.

“The province is moving forward with a safe and sensible approach to legalization that will ensure we can keep our communities and roads safe, promote public health and harm reduction, and protect Ontario’s young people,” the attorney general said.

There will be 40 LCBO weed stores in place across the province on July 1, 2018, 80 by 2019, and 150 in 2020. (Source: Toronto Star) 

 

 

 

 

Friday November 27, 2015

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Friday November 27, 2015 The LCBO wants to sell you pot Stocking weed alongside wine at the LCBO is the best way to protect public health, say addiction experts. But for marijuana advocates it's more of the same prohibition. In a statement released Monday, the union representing LCBO workers said the provincially owned stores are the ideal place to sell marijuana, should the federal government legalize it. "If they do legalize it, then it's a drug," Warren (Smokey) Thomas told the Star. "So we think that, like alcohol, it should be controlled." Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, said secure warehouses and staff trained to check ages are some of the reasons the LCBO should be the sole source of legal pot in the province, as it is with most alcohol. The scheme would also generate revenue for the government to combat the potential social costs. But marijuana advocates say those social costs and the spectre of public danger are overblown, and government-run sales would continue a prohibitionist regulatory approach. "Our view of course has always been that marijuana is one of the safest drugs. It's not any worse, slightly better, than coffee," said Blair Longley, the leader of the federal Marijuana Party. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals won this fall's election with an campaign platform promising to "legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana." However, Longley maintains the drug should be proportionately restricted based on its danger. So ideally, he said, anyone should be free to grow and use the plant how she wishes with the informed consent as to any danger. Hugo St-Onge, leader of Quebec's Bloc Pot party agrees that government stores are not the way forward. "We need to stop comparing marijuana to alcohol," he said. "Marijuana should have its own model, its own system." He prefers a food-model regulatory system, with sales done in a similar fa

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday November 27, 2015

The LCBO wants to sell you pot

Stocking weed alongside wine at the LCBO is the best way to protect public health, say addiction experts. But for marijuana advocates it’s more of the same prohibition.

Wednesday March 4, 2015In a statement released Monday, the union representing LCBO workers said the provincially owned stores are the ideal place to sell marijuana, should the federal government legalize it.

“If they do legalize it, then it’s a drug,” Warren (Smokey) Thomas told the Star. “So we think that, like alcohol, it should be controlled.”

Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, said secure warehouses and staff trained to check ages are some of the reasons the LCBO should be the sole source of legal pot in the province, as it is with most alcohol.

The scheme would also generate revenue for the government to combat the potential social costs. But marijuana advocates say those social costs and the spectre of public danger are overblown, and government-run sales would continue a prohibitionist regulatory approach.

“Our view of course has always been that marijuana is one of the safest drugs. It’s not any worse, slightly better, than coffee,” said Blair Longley, the leader of the federal Marijuana Party.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won this fall’s election with an campaign platform promising to “legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana.” However, Longley maintains the drug should be proportionately restricted based on its danger. So ideally, he said, anyone should be free to grow and use the plant how she wishes with the informed consent as to any danger.

Hugo St-Onge, leader of Quebec’s Bloc Pot party agrees that government stores are not the way forward.

“We need to stop comparing marijuana to alcohol,” he said. “Marijuana should have its own model, its own system.”

He prefers a food-model regulatory system, with sales done in a similar fashion to Amsterdam’s cafés. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Thursday February 12, 2015

Thursday February 12, 2015Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 12, 2015

Price hike possible amid potential Beer Store changes, Molson Canada CEO says

BSChanges to the Beer Store could lead to higher prices, the CEO of Molson Coors Canada warned on Tuesday.

Stewart Glendinning’s comments to The Canadian Press come amid a push from Queen’s Park for the Beer Store’s foreign owners — Labatt, Molson Coors and Sleeman — to start paying a “franchise fee.”
“My overall worry is that we create a problem for beer volumes in Ontario,” Glendinning said.

Monday, December 22, 2014An expert panel headed by former TD Bank CEO Ed Clark recommended the fee, a cost the companies would not be allowed to pass on to consumers as a price hike. Clark said the province could strip the brewing giants of their monopoly should they refuse.

Clark also recommended the government-owned LCBO be allowed to sell 12-packs of beer instead of just six-packs. As the Star revealed in December, a secret deal between the LCBO and the Beer Store means lucrative 12-packs and 24-packs cannot be sold at liquor stores.

Glendinning’s comments echo those of Jeff Newton, president of Canada’s National Brewers — which runs the Beer Store — who has said that adding new taxes to the retailer and selling larger packs at the LCBO is a “recipe for higher beer prices.”

But the province is still exploring the panel’s recommendations.

Saturday November 15, 2014“We know that changes need to be made at the Beer Store,” said Kelsey Ingram, spokesperson for Finance Minister Charles Sousa.

In November’s Fall Economic Statement, Ingram noted, Sousa expressed support for the recommendations, including improving transparency at the Beer Store, providing Ontarians with a fair share of profits, ensuring all producers, including craft breweries, are treated equitably, and extending the sale of 12-packs of beer into LCBO stores. ‎

On Tuesday, Glendinning described the Beer Store as a break-even co-operative. Sousa has previously disagreed. (Continued: Toronto Star)

Monday, December 22, 2014

Monday, December 22, 2014Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Monday, December 22, 2014

Kathleen Wynne warns ‘change’ looms for The Beer Store

Premier Kathleen Wynne says Ontarians can “expect some change” in the new year on the way booze is sold in the province, including a rethink of the government’s deal with the foreign-owned Beer Store.

While the premier remained coy about how far she is prepared to go, she said the Liberals are “absolutely” serious about reforms.

“I’m impatient to get at that,” Wynne told the Star on Wednesday during a year-end interview in her Queen’s Park office.

“There’s a distribution system that works very well, but the fact it works very well has a value to it, right?” she said of the privately owned Beer Store.

“So how do we realize that value for the people of the province?”

A blue-ribbon panel on monetizing provincial assets led by former TD Bank chair Ed Clark has recommended keeping the LCBO in public hands while expanding its operations and charging The Beer Store a “franchise fee.”

Clark has warned the brewers, who claim they cannot afford another tariff, they will not be allowed to pass along the levy to consumers in the form of higher beer prices.

If they balk, the government is threatening to take away the monopoly enjoyed by AB InBev, MolsonCoors, and Sapporo, the offshore parent companies of Labatt, Molson and Sleeman. (Source: Toronto Star)

Kathleen Wynne, Ontario, Beer, Beer Store, liquor, cartel, monopoly, alcohol

Saturday November 15, 2014

Saturday November 15, 2014Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday November 15, 2014

Beer Store should pay more to province, says privatization czar

Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government is threatening to take away the privately owned Beer Store monopoly if brewers balk at paying a “franchise fee” to the province.

That’s according to Wynne’s privatization czar, former TD Bank chair Ed Clark, who tabled a report on public assets Thursday that recommends modernizing booze sales.

While Clark cautions against selling off the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, he said the province could “free up $2 billion to $3 billion” to fund transit by liquidating parts of Hydro One.

More controversially, he said The Beer Store, owned by AB InBev, MolsonCoors, and Sapporo, will have to cough up more money to Queen’s Park without raising prices for consumers — or else.

“Their position is that they can’t afford to absorb a tax,” Clark told reporters in a conference call after releasing his 77-page study, “Retain & Gain: Making Ontario’s Assets Work Better for Taxpayers and Consumers.”

“If we do decide to charge a franchise fee of some sort (and they say) they don’t have any room, they’re just right up against the wall here and they don’t have a dollar to give . . . we’re saying, ‘Well, then that means you’re really saying is that this franchise that you have is worthless. Would you then give it up?’ ” said Clark.

“And then they say they don’t want to, but they don’t want to pay for it. We don’t think that’s a reasonable position. If you really think this thing is valueless, then give it up and we’ll auction it off and see if people would pay something for it.”

Clark’s salvo, which went further than anything in his premier’s advisory council on government assets’ report, caught the breweries off guard.

“Beyond what’s in the report, we haven’t seen anything from the council on that issue at all. We haven’t received anything that speaks to (those) comments,” said Jeff Newton, president of Canada’s National Brewers, which runs the 448 Beer Stores across Ontario.

The panel report said the LCBO, the government’s 639-outlet liquor monopoly, should be allowed to sell 12-packs of beer instead of just six-packs. That would help craft brewers, though cases of 24 would still be exclusively sold at The Beer Store.

“We believe that the relationship between the provincial government and The Beer Store should be revised to ensure that Ontario taxpayers receive their fair share of the profits from The Beer Store,” the report said.

“Consumers should not see an increase in prices as a result of this change.”

But Newton argued The Beer Store and the breweries, which employ 9,600 people in the province, cannot absorb any levy because “at the end of the day those costs have to go somewhere.” (Source: Hamilton Spectator)