Chris Selley: White Claw at 7-Eleven! Pray for us here in the Centre of the Universe

Dear friends. The unthinkable has happened: Doug Ford's madmen have licensed 'convenience stores' (eww) to sell beer, wine, cider and canned cocktails

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Published Sep 07, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  5 minute read

Selling alcoholic beverages in convenience stores in other parts of Canada and the rest of the world might work without causing disaster, but this is Ontario. Photo by Chris Young/The Canadian Press/File

Dear non-Toronto friends,

This city is in crisis. This may be my last communiqué before the telex goes down for good, and I feel honour-bound to tell the world of my city’s plight. If the worst should occur, which it almost certainly will, please tell our story.

The unthinkable has occurred: Doug Ford’s madmen and women at Queen’s Park have licensed hundreds upon hundreds of new locations — called “convenience stores,” in local parlance — to sell beer, wine, cider and pre-mixed cocktails.

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They did this instead of fixing health care, if you can believe that. And, outrage upon outrage, the government even made a map of such locations — as if delivering fallen Ontarians one by one to Mr. Booze himself.

Why, within just a few hundred metres of where I write, through my tears, I can discern on the map more than five such new locations. There’s Mei Convenience, Mimi Variety, Lucy Grocery and Meat, Queen & Jarvis Convenience … the list goes on, and on, my God. Church attendance is reportedly soaring as Torontonians steel themselves for the forthcoming.

Ford’s government did this entirely to solicit corporate donations to his party (some say that’s actually illegal, but whatever) from his buddies at convenience-store empires 7-Eleven and Couche-Tard … and presumably from Mimi and Lucy, whoever they are. Very rich women, clearly.

Instead of fixing health care!

Until recently, some semblance of sanity prevailed: The nearest government-run liquor store to where I sit now is a 15-minute walk away; the nearest Beer Store, the privately owned former quasi-monopoly where you’re still supposed to return your bottles and cans, is nearer to 20 minutes.

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And now, suddenly, a bottle or can is shockingly near to hand. And this will lead to more alcohol-related harms. Of this there is no doubt, as one expert recently told the Toronto Methodist Star: “Harm will increase in Ontario. That is straightforward.”

It is true that many jurisdictions around the world report similar or lower levels of alcohol consumption and related harms than Ontario despite having much greater access to retail alcohol — Italy, Greece, the United States — but that is not germane to this discussion. Ontarians are not like other people. Ontario is not like other places. We are worse. Or maybe better. Or some combination of the two.

They did this instead of fixing health care, if you can believe that

Among these harms will be a rapid increase in impaired driving, because now there are more retail-alcohol locations within walking distance of Torontonians’ homes. I urge you to resist, where we have failed to, the insidious temptation to find that notion completely stupid and suspect that the opposite will prove true.

Theft at these new locations will be rampant, because if there’s anything serial liquor thieves love stealing it’s beer, wine, cider and pre-mixed cocktails. And if there’s anywhere they love stealing it from, it’s a small business that might actually try to stop them — as opposed to the government-run LCBO stores, which proudly let them sashay off with their takings.

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Convenience stores and their employees, who face fines and loss of their liquor retailing licences for serving underage customers, will naturally be far more likely to sell alcohol to children than government liquor stores and their employees, who face no real consequences. This is an Ontario fact.

All this liquor-retail liberalization replaces well-paying union jobs at the LCBO with low-paying, presumably abusive positions in the private sector. (Yes, yes, I understand many new liquor-retailing employees in Ontario are in fact unionized, but a private-sector union isn’t a proper union. Most people should work for the government.)

By the way, my neighbours tell me that LCBO employees are criminally underpaid and terribly treated. Shame.

What Ontario should be doing is emulating countries like Scotland, which has concertedly tackled its alcohol problems using price signals: “The key part of Scotland’s landmark policy was aimed at reducing drinking by introducing minimum unit prices to make drinking more expensive,” the Star recently reported.

Disregard the fact that a bottle of hard liquor is both far cheaper in Scotland than in Canada and far more available — i.e., at pretty much any supermarket — and the drinking age is 18. And rural Ontario supermarkets and convenience stores have sold hard liquor, along with everything else, without serious incident for years. None of that is germane to this discussion.

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Incidentally: Bars and pubs are precisely analogous to supervised-injection sites for opioid addicts. It is thus unconscionable to close supervised-injection sites simply because they’re too close to schools — another Ford-government initiative.

It is also unconscionable to put beer-and-wine stores near schools, though. Except the ones that already exist. They seem to be fine.

It is entirely uncontroversial for Kelsey’s, Boston Pizza or St-Hubert to serve alcohol alongside their food offerings, of course. But it is nothing short of outrageous for 7-Eleven to be allowed to do so, because, well … ew, gross.

And selling alcohol at gas-station convenience stores is unthinkable — except for the scores that already do — while Ontario enjoys some of the safest roads in the nation.

I should note that while increased prices are a good thing to keep consumption down, they are not a good thing if it’s convenience stores and supermarkets implementing the markup. Then they’re a bad, anti-consumer thing.

You can also be sure every Ontarian under 18 with a convenience-store job will be fired, because they won’t be allowed to serve liquor. Also, those young kids under 18 with convenience-store jobs will be traumatized by having to deal with horrible drunks all day.

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Admittedly, it’s conceivable that after a few weeks of novelty, no one will ever talk about any of this ever again. No one thinks of Quebec as an alcohol-ravaged hellhole, after all, despite running the same basic system Ford’s government is implementing. Or Italy, for that matter.

But Ontarians are different. Ontario is different. Torontonians and Toronto, above all, are different. Worse, but also better — but also worse. What works in other places doesn’t work here; rather, it leads to disaster. Except when it doesn’t.

So remember us, please, when the worst comes to pass. And in the meantime, please stop laughing at us.

Best wishes,

From the Centre of the Universe.

National Post

[email protected]

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