Ontario Premier Doug Ford has a losing record as Minister of Alcohol Sales & Marketing. His 2018 Buck-a-Beer brainstorm bombed, while loosened regulations that permitted beer and wine at the grocery at an outrageous financial cost to the province met with mostly disapproval or disinterest.
Belly up to the bar. Or maybe just buckle up.
In a major policy shift, and absent any consultation in the public square, two Ford appointees on Ontario’s Licence Appeal Tribunal in 2022 have approved bar service at four convenience store locations in Toronto, two each in London and Hamilton, and single stores in Brampton, Sarnia and Leamington.
Doug is getting it done without all those messy steps involved in lawmaking in a democratic society. In fact, it is reasonable to conclude Doug engineered the entire scheme from start to finish.
Outdoing even Québec’s depanneurs (because it’s service of beverage alcohol in your glass, not takeout sales) welcome to Happy Hour at the 7-Eleven at Yonge and Eglinton in Midtown Toronto, and you-know-who is the doorman opening night, 2025/26.
This is not to offer a Puritanical take on these developments. Beer and wine in grocery/convenience stores has been a hot topic for decades, and Doug Ford appears to have broken the opinion log jam.
But dictating new terms and conditions without input from anyone but business cronies is Doug’s modus operandi here.
Certainly few visualized Mom and Dad knocking back a couple before picking up milk and lottery tickets.
Back in 2018, Ford, Ontario’s infamous teetotaller, ponied up an outlandish $1.1 billion in taxpayer funds to a consortium of wealthy international sudsmakers known as Brewers Retail to settle a break fee. The payoff was Ontarians could buy beers at Loblaws, Metro and Sobey’s
Now 7-Eleven, the inventor of the Slushie offered in 78,000 stores worldwide, serves as a platform for Doug in full-on huckster mode. Buck a Beer has morphed into Make Ontario Buzzed Again at your local convenience store.
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Ontario’s slow-motion dismantling of its near Puritanical restrictions on alcohol consumption picked up steam when Doug Ford parked his pick-up truck at Queen’s Park after winning the June 2018 election. Beer and wine in the grocery stores was a campaign promise.
The convenience store foray has been more low key.
In the middle of a trade mission to Washington, D.C. in February 2020, the King of Ford Nation surreptitiously blew town for Dallas, Texas to attend a meeting with a key CEO. He didn’t leave a forwarding address. The boys on the press bus had no idea where he was.
On this Fordian side-hustle, there were no weighty cross-border trade issues on the agenda. With novel “corona” virus fear escalating at home, a mere month before the March 11/12, 2020 Covid-19 shutdowns, the premier of the largest province in G7 Canada was in Texas demonstrating his skewed priorities: promoting alcohol sales to a U.S.-based retailer of convenience junk food.
The conflab was with Joseph DePinto, the controlling mind of multinational 7-Eleven. Doug was there to discuss in-store bar service in designated alcohol consumption areas in the chain’s 61 Ontario locations. But for the premier of a province of 15 million, it was the equivalent of selling small wares door-to-door.
Picture it: Ford at the beck and call of an American retailer – not unlike the National Post‘s publisher’s relationship to its American hedge-fund owner.
With Pierre Poilievre on the ropes following a December 12 by-election drubbing, Ford, recently ordained the CPC’s hottest SKU by Toronto Star‘s Martin Regg Cohn, is now knee-deep in a beer & wine-slinging endeavour with 7-Eleven.
“I encourage 7-Eleven, please come and expand here in Ontario,” said the alcohol-obsessed booze-refusing teetotaller.
“It’s a great company,” proclaimed the Premier in February 2020. Not surprisingly, Ford has delivered results to Mr. DePinto at 7-Eleven just shy of three to years later.
There has been pushback. The London 7-Eleven application brought an objection from Western University officials concerned about the proximity of the proposed licensed premises to several university residences.
Allegations 7-Eleven bars will be understaffed, that “bartenders” will lack sufficient training to serve clientele and may serve patrons to the extent of intoxication were rejected out of hand by Gregory Flude, a Ford appointee.
“Young people on and near this campus have more than enough opportunities to purchase and consume alcohol in large quantities,” he contended.
In a similar appeal of a 1760 Bloor Street West licensing approval, the City of Toronto opposed the issuing of a licence on grounds of public policy, rather than on the specifics of location. The city also submitted an alternative argument: should the licence be granted, it should be subject to certain conditions regarding sales hours and signage.
“After considering the parties’ evidence and submissions, I have concluded that the licence should be issued without conditions,” ruled Registrar Avril Farlam, yet another – wait for it – Ford appointee.
The Premier gets a serotonin boost from shaking hands with guys who have voting control, no matter how small the town or fringe the business. Leveraging his position with insiders has proven to be a pretty clutch technique for Doug.
Doug is adept at being friendly to people he had never met before, if the end result delivers an advantage either to himself or one of his upper-crust sponges.
One might well ask why Doug did not pitch the idea to Couche-Tard/Circle K, the convenience store behemoth based in Laval, QC.
The Convenience Industry Council of Canada has published new sales data showing category performance in Quebec, where consumers are allowed to purchase beer at their local corner store.
In 2021, beer and wine accounted for $473 million in C-store sales in Quebec. That makes it not just the second-highest category by revenue in Quebec, but for the entire country, second only to tobacco.
The previous Liberal government’s 10-year Master Framework Agreement with the Beer Store is set to expire in 2025. Under terms of the agreement, the Ford government is required to give notice by next fall of 2024, if it doesn’t intend to renew it.
If, as expected, it does not, it would clear the way for convenience stores to sell alcohol. Only Doug and the CEO of 7-Eleven have all the details on who’s serving the drinks and where.
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