Quotulatiousness

December 5, 2024

Ontario’s housing market squeezed by the 35.6% combined tax rate on new builds

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The housing situation in Toronto and the rest of the province has been very tight for years. Lots of would-be buyers chasing the proportionally smaller number of new houses being built. This drives prices higher, but no matter how much of the final price is the builder’s profit margin, the government gets nearly four times as much on every new house sale:

The National Post previously reported that at least a third of a new home’s sticker price in Ontario was comprised of taxes, but an updated report, courtesy of the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis (CANCEA), now puts the figure at 35.6 per cent.

(It gets even better when it comes to affordable housing — but more on that later.)

The Increasing Tax Burden on New Ontario Homes: 2024, which was commissioned by the Residential Construction Council of Ontario and released by CANCEA on Tuesday, is eye-opening for reasons beyond the fact that a compendium of largely superfluous taxes and production levies has reached 35.1 per cent of the final purchase price of a new home in the city of Toronto. It’s 35.5 per cent in the outlying 905 region, and 34.5 per cent in Ottawa.

The report needed only 16 pages to elucidate how bureaucratic machinations aren’t just gouging prospective homebuyers, but homeowners, too — especially the estimated 1.2 million whose mortgages, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, are due for renewal in 2025.

Read closely enough, CANCEA’s report makes a strong argument that, effectively, Canadians work for the government rather the other way around.

For example, CANCEA’s report demonstrates that 70 per cent of aforesaid taxes on new homes “consist of direct fees on the home, such as DC (development charges) and other fees”.

“For homes priced at $450,000,” which aligns with median income, “… the tax burden rises sharply to 45.2 per cent,” says the report, which also notes that economics often force developers to build smaller units that are insufficient for families.

November 29, 2024

Trump is a deals guy … and Canadian politicians need to negotiate with him on that basis

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In what has turned out to be his final column for TVO, Matt Gurney says that Canadian views on Trump need to evolve if we hope to preserve the overall amicable relationship between the two countries. Trump made his career on making deals … but not many of our political leaders seem to have clued in that this means we need to approach all our post-Biden American affairs with that in mind:

Justin Trudeau meets with President Donald Trump at the White House, 13 February, 2017.
Photo from the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.

Ever since the re-election of Donald Trump earlier this month, the most interesting question in Canadian politics has been “Who gets it?” That’s the main thing I’ve been looking for, and I think some of our leaders get it — or are starting to, at least.

Doug Ford doesn’t get it. Or didn’t, anyway, up until Tuesday afternoon.

On Monday night, president-elect Trump announced via a post on his Truth Social app that, as one of his first acts upon retaking the Oval Office in January, he would levy a 25 per cent tariff against all goods coming in from Canada and Mexico until those two countries fix the problems Trump says exist along the border. That’s a careful bit of phrasing on my part, so let me explain: I don’t disagree that there are issues for the United States along both borders. I don’t necessarily accept that the issues are the same on both borders or that Trump has accurately characterized the overall situation. But, in any case, Canada now has less than two months to figure out what it can do, assuming it can do anything, to satisfy the president-elect’s demands.

It’s very possible that we can do enough. Trump is a negotiator and a dealmaker, and we have to see his social-media post through that lens. He is establishing a strong opening position, and we’ll negotiate him down from there. That’s the good news, such as it is. The bad news, though, is that there’s no reason to assume Trump is going to do this only once. After we meet his demands on the border, he could demand that Canada take on more of the burden of the military defence of North America and the Western alliance. After we’ve drafted a bunch of people and launched a fleet of new warships and sent a heavily armed stabilization force to Haiti, he could come after us for our dairy subsidies. Once we give way on that, it’ll be getting tough on white-collar crime or telecom access or airline access. And so on and so on and so on. It’ll be one damned thing after another.

The broad contours of this were clear to me by about 1:30 in the morning on the day after (or night of, if you prefer) the U.S. election. As I keep saying, the party is over. Some of Trump’s demands will be basically utterly bogus, and others may be arguably unreasonable, but some of them are absolutely going to be fair, and Canada has, to my enormous frustration, left itself very, very vulnerable to his brand of pressure. We have utterly failed as a country to adapt to a changing world order by getting this country onto a more serious footing on any number of fronts, especially trade and defence. We were warned by friendlier U.S. administrations, including by presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. We didn’t listen. That was idiotic, and I can only hope not suicidal on our parts. Trump is going to get his way.

November 28, 2024

“Fly the flag, you bigoted rural cis scum!” said the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Apparently just failing to vote for a “voluntary” observation of Pride season is enough to get the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario to impose fines and mandatory re-education sentences on elected municipal officials here in the most tolerant province in Canada:

Emo is a township of about 1,300 people located in the far west of Ontario, along the border with Minnesota.

In a decision handed down last week, the Human Tribunal of Ontario ruled that Emo, its mayor and two of its councillors had violated the Ontario Human Rights Code by refusing to proclaim June as “Pride Month”.

The town was also cited for failing to fly “an LGBTQ2 rainbow flag”, despite the fact that they don’t have an official flag pole.

The dispute began in 2020 when the township was approached by the group Borderland Pride with a written request to proclaim June as Pride Month.

Attached to the letter was a draft proclamation including clauses such as “pride is necessary to show community support and belonging for LGBTQ2 individuals” and “the diversity of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression represents a positive contribution to society”.

Emo was also asked to fly an “LGBTQ2 rainbow flag for a week of your choosing”.

Borderland Pride then asked Emo to “email us a copy of your proclamation or resolution once adopted and signed”.

[…]

The claim of discrimination ultimately hinged on a single line uttered by Emo Mayor Harold McQuaker. When the proclamation came up for consideration, McQuaker was heard to say in a recording of the meeting, “There’s no flag being flown for the other side of the coin … there’s no flags being flown for the straight people”.

As Human Rights Tribunal vice-chair Karen Dawson wrote in her decision, “I find this remark was demeaning and disparaging of the LGBTQ2 community of which Borderland Pride is a member and therefore constituted discrimination under the Code”.

Dawson also ruled that given the “close proximity” of McQuaker’s comment to his nay vote — that too “constituted discrimination under the Code”.

[…]

The Human Rights Tribunal ultimately ordered the Township to pay $10,000 to Borderland Pride, and for McQuaker to personally pay them another $5,000.

This was lower than what Borderland Pride had been seeking; they wanted $15,000 from the township and $10,000 each from the three councillors who voted no.

But McQuaker and Emo’s chief administrative officer were also ordered to complete an online course known as “Human Rights 101” and “provide proof of completion … to Borderland Pride within 30 days”.

The course is offered by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and their latest edition opens with an animated video telling viewers that the Human Rights Code “is not meant to punish”.

September 8, 2024

The last dispatch from Toronto before the catastrophe began

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Media, Politics, Wine — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Toronto, in fact all of Ontario, may no longer be there when you get up tomorrow morning. As Chris Selley explained in his brave, final communiqué from the doomed province:

Doug Ford, the form of the destructor Ontario chose.

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.

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.

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.

It’s true! Even saintly Bowmanville has been sullied with the demon liquor thanks to Premier Ford’s diabolical plan:

August 30, 2024

Experts are concerned that criticism of experts will weaken their role in our political system

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the National Post, Geoff Russ dares to imply that the experts are not the divinely inspired superior beings with unfailing wisdom about any and all issues:

So-called “experts” have weakened Canada’s political discourse far more than Pierre Poilievre ever has. Journalist and author Stephen Maher recently penned a column in the Globe & Mail titled, “By slamming experts, Pierre Poilievre and his staff are degrading political debate”.

Maher is an even-handed journalist, and his column should not be written off as the scribblings of a Liberal partisan. What his column misses is how the term “expert” has been abused, and the degree to which “experts” have thoroughly discredited themselves in recent years.

Poilievre’s criticisms of the “experts” would not resonate if they lived up to the title bestowed upon them.

For example, the Doug Ford government’s decision to close 10 safe injection sites after implementing a ban on such facilities located near schools and child-care centres. The closures were lamented by “experts” trotted out by the CBC as putting peoples’ lives at risk.

The safe injection sites slated to be shut down are near schools and daycares, and there is demonstrable proof that crime rises near these sites wherever they are located.

Derek Finkle recently wrote that the critiques of the closures levelled by selected “experts” failed to note how community members had been threatened with rape, arson, and murder since the injection site in his Toronto neighbourhood had been opened.

These are reasonable grounds for a government to reconsider whether they should allow drug-use, supervised or not, to proliferate in neighbourhoods where families reside.

For all their alleged expertise, many “experts” seem unwilling to actually investigate what is happening on the ground, and often give plainly bad advice altogether, and this goes back decades.

The “experts” failed to predict the 2008 financial crisis, they said the risk to Canadians from the coronavirus was low in early 2020, and they failed to prevent runaway inflation after the worst of it had subsided.

Was it not the “experts” who asserted that arming and funding of Ukraine prior to Vladimir Putin’s invasion in 2022 was a bad idea? After the invasion began, was it not the “experts” who confidently predicted Putin’s army would conquer the whole of Ukraine in a matter of days, and not be bogged down in a years-long conflict that would reshape global trade?

The truth is that we live in a worse-off world because of the advice and predictions of “experts”.

August 14, 2024

Premier Doug Ford’s weird plan to hold the justice system to account

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The problem with Premier Ford’s as-yet-unelaborated plan to collect formal statistics on the products of the criminal justice system is that it’s weird. And Canadians don’t like weird things because something something Donald Trump something something Hitler. Despite that, Colby Cosh thinks it’s a good idea:

Superior Court of Justice building on University Avenue in Toronto (formerly the York County Court House).

… the very idea of addressing a social problem by gathering quantitative information is so un-Canadian as to seem radical and startling. It certainly seemed that way to the lawyers and civil libertarians who freaked out at Ford’s mention of “accountability” for judges who fail to protect the public from criminal predators.

Judicial independence is an axiom of our constitution — but to the degree that judges become policymakers, which is perpetually increasing as they discover creative new applications of the Charter, their lack of oversight by elected legislators and by the voting public is also a serious and obvious problem, purely in principle. It is no wonder the legal guild takes fright at the notion of “accountability” if it is interpreted to mean that judges might be subject to enforceable performance measures or firing by a minister.

But, of course, the word “account” is visible in there, and measurement of a social crisis is necessary to establish that one exists, even if almost everybody believes it to exist. Our courts are the first to castigate a government that makes some legislative change affecting individual rights without an attempt at inquiry into its reasonability and urgency. Ford, in proposing to establish the dimensions of preventable re-offending, is doing exactly what a legislator hoping to reduce crime ought to do: gather numbers. Collect and publish information. And let us specify that we mean publish publish, in an open, dependable, accessible way, with maximum detail.

Frankly, Ford’s announcement seems as much as anything like a reaction to being backed into a corner by an unresponsive Liberal government, which controls bail policy and the content of the Criminal Code, and by judges, whose irrational bail and sentencing decisions flood what’s left of our news media. Provincial politicians are bound to be judged by voters on the perceived prevalence of crime, but about all they can actually do about it is to, well, buy more choppers for the coppers and start collecting local data about revolving-door justice.

Update: Fixed broken link.

August 12, 2024

“Premier Doug Ford’s plans for the demon liquor will lead us all to untold poverty and perdition”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Wine — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the National Post, Chris Selley points and laughs at the classist viewing-with-alarm and frenzied pearl-clutching over the impending rule change that will allow wine and beer to be sold (and even served) in convenience stores like the 7-Eleven chain:

The plight of poverty-stricken Ontarians, forced to get drunk at their local 7-Eleven dive bar.
Gin Lane, from Beer Street and Gin Lane via Wikimedia Commons.

Ontario politics in recent weeks has played out as something like a real-time satire of itself, with the Latent Methodist Brigade still insisting Premier Doug Ford’s plans for the demon liquor will lead us all to untold poverty and perdition. The news this week has only made them more upset: Japanese convenience store empire 7-Eleven will open licensed areas in 58 of its 59 stores in Ontario, in which you can enjoy an alcoholic drink with your hot dog, nachos or chicken nuggets. The company says it’ll add 60 jobs.

Fifty-eight is not a large number, you will agree, in a province with many thousands of licensed premises, any of which might get you drunk and send you back out to your car or boat (though of course they shouldn’t). Some of those thousands of licensed premises are even attached to gas stations, I can report. And many gas-station convenience stores in Ontario sell beer, wine and liquor as independently run “LCBO agency stores”.

For the record, 7-Eleven announced they were doing this way back in December 2022. Pro-forma neo-puritan controversy ensued, and quickly died down. Two 7-Elevens already operate as licensed restaurants in Ontario, apparently without incident, along with 19 in Alberta. (Unfortunately, bien-pensant Ontarians are trained from birth to believe Alberta’s liquor-retail reforms in the 1990s were a grotesque misadventure that everyone there regrets.)

Nevertheless, the same pro-forma neo-puritan freakout is playing out again.

“Let me get this straight. 7-Eleven locations where people fuel up their cars will now allow folks to drink on the premises? What could possibly go wrong?” sneered JP Hornick, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union (OPSEU), who was last seen dragging LCBO employees into a disastrous tantrum-cum-strike over expanding retail access.

“We need a government that will focus on real things including bringing down hospital wait times, fixing schools and tackling the housing crisis as their signature achievements, amongst many more,” Toronto Coun. Josh Matlow correctly averred on Twitter … and then, as is the fashion here, went full non-sequitur: “Doug Ford made sure we could drink coolers inside a 7-Eleven.” As if the government decided it could only pick one.

(And can I just say here, any Toronto city councillor complaining about another politician’s lack of “signature achievements” is on bloody thin ice.)

Every fully paid-up member of the Laurentian Elite [Spit!] believes with all their flinty hearts that Alberta is a barren wasteland of ruined lives thanks to the demon liquor being sold in corner stores. Initial issues from a generation ago are firmly ensconced as “the way it is” with liberalized booze access out there in the wild west.

August 10, 2024

The GTA job situation is dire, yet the government keeps allowing special permits to bring in foreign workers

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I try not to moan about my work situation here on the blog … nobody comes here for that … but despite my decades of experience in my technical field, it’s been a very long time since I had an interview (I’m ashamed to admit how long), despite all the jobs I’ve applied for. I have several strikes against me, of course, in that I’m an older slightly disabled white male, but it’s not just about me: Canadian employers in the Greater Toronto Area are still getting special permits to bring in foreign workers despite the huge numbers of un- and under-employed Canadian citizens and permanent residents in the GTA:

With job fair lineups regularly snaking around blocks and experienced professionals unable to secure roles despite applying to hundreds of them, it’s safe to say the job market is pretty terrifying right now for anyone looking for any type of work in the Toronto area.

Population growth has been outpacing employment gains, pushing the city’s unemployment rate to a dismal 7.4 per cent earlier this year (compared to Canada’s 5.8 per cent). So, it’s no wonder that residents are concerned to find how many local businesses are outsourcing labour to foreign workers.

A user-created map shared to Reddit last week shows which employers in the GTA have applied to hire overseas personnel via Labour Market Impact Assessments from 2023 on, which are supposed to be used only when there is “a need for a foreign worker to fill the job [because] no Canadian worker or permanent resident is available to do the job.”

While it seems like the above would be a rare exception given the current work crisis, the map shows quite the opposite: a shocking number of firms trying to use LMIAs to hire thousands of staffers, from food service and retail workers to engineering technicians and administrative assistants.

The data used is from Canada’s Open Government Portal, the page explains, adding that “there have also been instances where employers have illegally sold their approved LMIA positions to workers.”

The post has tacked up thousands of upvotes and a robust discussion of hundreds of comments, almost all from people who are angry and confused about why so many places are actively trying to recruit — and in many cases, successfully recruiting — people from outside of the country when so many here are desperately seeking jobs.

July 21, 2024

LCBO strike reportedly settled

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

A tentative deal was announced on Friday afternoon, then un-announced after the LCBO claimed the union had added financial demands to the return-to-work conditions after the contract itself had been agreed, and then on Saturday, re-announced. If the deal is ratified by the union, LCBO stores across Ontario should re-open on Tuesday.

It was the first LCBO strike in Ontario history, and it’s open to debate whether the union members will get all that much for their two-week unpaid break. The National Post‘s Chris Selley thinks not, calling it the “Stupidest. Strike. Ever.”

“LCBO at Parkway Mall” by Xander Wu is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 .

A week into the strike, a scant 15 per cent of Ontarians told Leger marketing that shuttered LCBO outlets had “affected (them) personally”. Only 29 per cent said they felt the government should legislate or arbitrate LCBO workers back into stores as soon as possible. Eleven per cent said they didn’t even know the strike was happening. And 32 per cent said they had explored “alternative locations” to buy booze, of which there are nowadays myriad.

Many more explored those opportunities in week two of the strike, I suspect, as fridges and wine racks were depleted. That’s potentially bad news for the LCBO’s future retail market share. But you didn’t even need an alternative to the LCBO: With a few days’ planning you could get all your regular brands delivered for free. Delivery and wholesale options were running as normal. Restaurants and supermarkets supplied by the LCBO were still supplied, and though there were reports of empty shelves at some supermarkets, that wasn’t truer than normal at the one I visit.

[…]

So this all looks like a terrible miscalculation by union leadership on behalf of its members — both a fundamental misreading of who had leverage, and a bizarre tactical choice to make the strike first and foremost about expanding the sale of ready-to-drink cocktails and seltzers (RTDs) to supermarkets and convenience stores.

Not wages; not benefits; not the number of full-time positions — things people can at least relate to — but where you can and cannot buy a White Claw or a Caesar in a can. Did they really think people would care?

Near as I can tell, it was an attempt to make this about the LCBO’s retail future: RTDs are a big and growing slice of the alcohol market in Ontario, only accessible (before the strike) at the LCBO. OPSEU wanted us to believe that by allowing supermarkets to sell them, Ontario would make no profit on them. And that’s their baked-in advantage: An incredible number of Ontarians, including far too many journalists, cannot wrap their minds around the notion of the government taking its cut at wholesale rather than retail.

Still, this gambit clearly fell flat.

Update: Fixed broken link to NP.

July 14, 2024

When the Ontario Progressive Conservatives backed away from LCBO privatization

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Politics, Wine — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the National Post, Terence Corcoran posts an excerpt from last year’s The Harris Legacy: Reflections on a Transformational Premier edited by Alister Campbell:

“LCBO at Parkway Mall” by Xander Wu is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 .

Almost 30 years ago, in 1995, the Ontario Progressive Conservative government led by Mike Harris promised to privatize the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). “We will sell off some assets, such as the LCBO,” said the party’s famed election document, the Common Sense Revolution (CSR). The LCBO could have been a true privatization — a full-fledged divestiture of a government monopoly into a new open and competitive market, but it never happened.

The failure to privatize the LCBO, lamentable from a consumer and economic perspective, remains a significant lost opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of privatization. If Harris had successfully de-monopolized the alcohol market, the whole concept of privatization would have been given a major boost. Instead, the government backed away from privatization of the alcohol market, preferring instead to allow the corporation to substitute modern marketing and retail razzle-dazzle to give the false impression it was offering the public the best of all worlds.

The LCBO failure is also a demonstration of the degree to which the Common Sense Revolution’s starting principles fell short in grasping the essential benefits of private versus public ownership and control. Neo-liberalism isn’t exactly a fine science. The Wikipedia entry on “Neo-liberalism” is a 30-page effort (including 400 footnote links to hundreds of warring academic papers), reflecting an economic and ideological scramble that dates back more than a century. But when the Harris government came to power, major elements of the free-market model were often overshadowed by fiscal policy objectives. With the LCBO, the Harris government veered off the neo-liberal course in pursuit of standard political objectives.

In 1995, the LCBO was a government owned and operated province-wide corporation that controlled liquor and wine wholesale and retail markets. Another private monopoly player, the Beer Store chain, while owned and operated by the brewing industry, was also essentially a government-sanctioned beer monopoly. The CSR neo-liberal objective should have been to privatize the alcohol market by selling the LCBO, deregulating the Beer Store monopoly and allowing beer sales through supermarkets and even corner stores. More importantly, dismantling the LCBO would allow other corporations to enter the alcohol retail business and provide consumers much more choice, which has been the Alberta experience. Notably, Alberta achieved a successful and deregulated approach without sacrificing provincial revenues.

The neo-liberal objective of privatization is to benefit consumers and enhance economic productivity through competition. Instead, the Harris government fell into the fiscal policy trap that routinely captures politicians, bureaucrats and corporate insiders. Instead of aiming to benefit consumers, the objective soon became how to maximize the fiscal return to government. Never mind the consumer and the market. The objective became preserving — and enhancing — government revenues.

At the time, anti-privatization advocates frantically pointed at the Alberta experience of privatization of their provincial liquor monopoly, which (briefly) generated a lot of retail horror stories that Ontario newspapers gleefully republished (and, likely, emphasized out of proportion to the actual Alberta market). You can still hear Ontarians casting aspersions on the Alberta market as if nothing at all had changed after the initial rough patch. From what I’ve heard from Albertans, they have far wider choices of alcoholic beverages in stores much more conveniently sited with better open hours than anyone in Ontario enjoys. The Alberta government still gets at least as much in tax revenues from alcohol sales without needing to be in the distribution or retail business. It doesn’t seem to be the utter disaster that Ontario media portrays it to be … rather the contrary.

July 7, 2024

Ontario’s LCBO strike may be both justified and counterproductive

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Wine — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ontario’s main importer and distributor of wine, beer, and spirits is now facing its very first actual strike, as the negotiators couldn’t come to an agreement by the strike deadline on Friday morning. On the face of the dispute, the union certainly has some solid grounds for the strike, as pay hasn’t been keeping pace with (official) inflation and far too many of the LCBO’s workforce are on work schedules that keep them from earning full-time wages. On the other hand, over the last decade or so, both Liberal and Progressive Conservative provincial governments have been making piecemeal changes to the market so that the LCBO is far from the only place Ontario drinkers can purchase their preferred booze. Just off the top of my head, here are some of the alternative options now available to Ontario consumers:

“LCBO at Parkway Mall” by Xander Wu is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 .

  • The Beer Store, Ontario’s other (foreign-owned) booze oligopoly for beer and cider is still operating normally at all their retail locations and agency stores. They also have online ordering for delivery available to ordinary consumers.
  • The LCBO is still offering online sales — not same-day, but free delivery.
  • Ontario’s vast array of craft brewers are still able to sell individual cans or bottles of beer from their bottle shops or storefront locations (pre-packaged 6-, 12-, 24-container or other types are still limited to the Beer Store oligopoly, of course).
  • Ontario’s wineries are similarly still operating normally for retail sales at the winery or (for a few older wineries who still have grandfathered privileges from earlier licensing regimes) stand-alone retail stores.
  • Ontario’s much smaller — but growing — number of distilleries are also operating normally and are able to sell their locally produced whiskey, gin, vodka, etc. from their tasting rooms/bottle shops.
  • Many, many grocery stores in the province now sell wine, beer, or both, and are all operating normally. They may be slower to replenish the shelves as the LCBO’s limited number of non-union staff will be handling re-supply.

In addition, if the strike continues for more than two weeks, the LCBO will open a select number of their stores for limited hours across the province (again, limited by the number of non-unionized staff available to operate the stores). With all of this (and I’m sure I’m missing some options in my list), consumers may begin to draw the conclusion that the LCBO isn’t as essential as it once was:

On Thursday evening, Colleen MacLeod, chair of the team bargaining on behalf of government liquor-store employees, declared the summer of 2024 utterly ruined.

“Tonight, (Premier Doug) Ford’s dry summer begins,” said MacLeod, of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), hours before the first ever strike in the Liquor Control Board of Ontario’s (LCBO) history became official.

Desperate? Delusional? That’s up for debate. OPSEU’s press release announcing the strike suggests “delusional.” At one point it claims the LCBO is “Ontario’s best-kept secret.”

What could that possibly mean?

The release then quotes OPSEU president J.P. Hornick as follows: “We told Ford not to ruin everybody’s summer, but now he’s closed the Science Centre and forced a dry summer for Ontarians by refusing to offer a deal that would be good for LCBO workers and Ontario.”

The Ontario Science Centre is a tired old children’s destination in North Toronto that has been neglected in every way by consecutive provincial governments. I’m quite sure few people in Ottawa, Windsor or Thunder Bay have ever even heard of it. Mashing it together with the LCBO, just because OPSEU represents employees at both, suggests the union really doesn’t understand the fight it’s getting into.

If the Ford government is willing to dig in its heels and fight — which isn’t something it’s particularly known for — this could be a great win for the Ontario consumer.

It’s not 1990. The LCBO shutting the doors to its retail stores is really only a minor pain in the rear end, thanks to years of piecemeal, needlessly complex and and too-slow but nevertheless significant liberalization that really kicked into gear under former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne. (Ford is often mocked for being obsessed with alcohol, but Wynne was nearly beyond parody. If her government woke up in a crisis Monday morning, it was safe to say she’d find herself announcing more beer and wine in supermarkets by Thursday afternoon.)

Anecdotally, as I was in on Thursday picking up a small selection of wine and beer, I overheard a conversation with one of the staffers and another customer where the staffer didn’t believe there’d actually be a strike and that the only result of the brinksmanship at the bargaining table would be that they would have to do more re-stocking next week after the (understandably) higher sales during the past week.

June 27, 2024

The Toronto Star wants Ontario to adopt Scottish booze regulation (but ignore the failure)

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, Wine — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The Toronto Star always loves a good moral crusade, and if it also happens to fly in the face of whatever Premier Ford wants to do, then so much the better:

The Toronto Star is looking to Scotland to teach it how to reduce alcohol-related deaths. In an article titled “How Scotland started to kick its alcohol problem — and what Ontario could learn from it“, it pushes back on plans to liberalise Ontario’s state monopoly on alcohol retail, saying:

    Ontario officials say they are fulfilling a 2018 election promise to increase “choice and convenience for shoppers and support Ontario retailers, domestic producers and workers in the alcohol industry”.

    But Scotland has cut alcohol-related hospital admissions by 40 per cent and deaths by almost half. While in Ontario, alcohol-related admissions have risen by a third and deaths by almost half, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.

How did Scotland supposedly achieve this public health miracle?

    The key part of Scotland’s landmark policy was aimed at reducing drinking by introducing minimum unit prices to make drinking more expensive.,/p>

Ontario already has minimum pricing and Scotland doesn’t have a state alcohol monopoly, so it is not obvious what lessons Ontarians are supposed to be learning, but put that to one side for a moment and consider the main claim.

Anyone who has been following events in Scotland knows that alcohol-specific deaths have risen since minimum pricing was introduced in 2018 and have generally risen since 2012 following a significant downturn in the years prior.

It is that drop between 2006 and 2012 that the Toronto Star must be referring to when it claims that deaths fell by “almost half” (actually a third). But the Scottish government didn’t pass any anti-alcohol legislation in those six years and it certainly didn’t have minimum pricing. The newspaper mentions that the drink-drive limit was cut, but that didn’t happen until 2014 and the evidence is clear that it had no effect on road accidents.

Since the Toronto Star doesn’t mention when the decline in alcohol-specific deaths took place, it is leading its readers to believe that it coincided with the introduction of minimum pricing and the lowering of the drink-drive limit. I call that lying.

It is strangely fitting that Canadians are being lied to about the “success” of Scotland’s alcohol strategy since the Scottish public were conned into accepting minimum pricing, in part, on the basis of lies told about the “success” of minimum pricing in Canada. The neo-temperance academic Tim Stockwell, who is quoted in the Star article, published a series of studies in the 2010s making some absurd claims about minimum pricing that were parroted by campaigners in the UK.

LAV III RWS NANUK – A Closer Look

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Ontario Regiment Museum
Published Mar 14, 2024

First look at the newest addition to the museum collection: LAV III RWS (Remote Weapon System variant) aka NANUK.

This Canadian designed and built military vehicle just arrived at the museum. Executive Director Jeremy Neal Blowers (aka @Tank_Museum_Guy) gives a very quick talk on the vehicle and a comparison with the original LAV III in the museum.
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May 29, 2024

Ontario’s long and winding (and subsidy-strewn) road to beer in convenience stores

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Wine — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Apparently I’ll have a little bit more to celebrate on my birthday this year as the Ontario government’s glacially slow-to-change alcohol sales rules are being liberalized as of September 5th to allow all the province’s convenience stores to begin selling beer and wine:

“The Beer Store” by Like_the_Grand_Canyon is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Premier Doug Ford promised Ontarians beer in corner stores, supermarkets and big-box stores, and by God he has delivered. As of Sept. 5, all Ontario convenience stores meeting eligibility criteria will be allowed to sell beer, wine, cider and pre-mixed drinks. As of Oct. 31, the privilege will be extended to all grocery and big-box stores. The province says it expects as many as 8,500 new booze-procurement sites to come online under the new regime. By Ontario standards, it’s absolutely revolutionary.

The new regime is also, of course, hilariously complicated. And absurdly, offensively expensive.

It is fair to describe the new regime as somewhat more competitive, and certainly more convenient. In addition to offering potentially thousands of new locations, supermarkets (including the roughly 450 already licensed) will be able to offer volume discounts on beer — i.e., a 24-pack will cost less per bottle than a six-pack. This was a privilege hitherto reserved for The Beer Store, the American-, Belgian- and Japanese-owned conglomerate that dominated beer sales in Ontario from the end of Prohibition until fairly recently.

Private retailers will even be able to set their own prices, which until now has been considered blasphemy.

It is not fair to describe the new regime, as the government does, as an “open” market.

Near as I can tell, Ontario will by 2026 have the following retail environments in place:

  • The Beer Store. Smelly, surly, and the best-available value. Only beer — no cider or mixed drinks. It’s in the name.
  • LCBO locations. Government-run liquor stores retain their near-absolute monopoly on hard liquor sales, in addition to selling beer (especially craft beer, in which The Beer Store’s owners aren’t so interested), wine and everything else.
  • LCBO- and/or The Beer Store-branded “agency stores” in rural areas, which sell everything the LCBO does, but operate inside of convenience stores, small supermarkets and other local businesses, and are staffed by non-government employees.
  • The existing supermarkets licensed to sell beer, cider and wine (and in rare cases all three!), plus scores of new outlets — the new 8,500 new locations.

The Beer Store maintains a monopoly (in urban areas) on wholesale for bars and restaurants and on refunding cans and bottles, although its new “master framework agreement” (MFA) doesn’t even oblige it to maintain its current number of locations — which in urban areas have been dwindling rapidly. I’m a 17-minute walk from my nearest Beer Store. The house I grew up in, in the heart of midtown Toronto, is a 45-minute walk. I’m not schlepping a leaky garbage bag full of empty cans either distance.

March 25, 2024

WWII Allied Vehicles – Universal Carrier

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Ontario Regiment Museum
Published Jan 26, 2022

This multi-part series was originally created in support of our friends at D-Day Conneaut for presentation during their live stream in 2020.

In part 5 the Museum’s Operation Manager Dan Acre details the history of a Canadian-made WWII vehicle, the Universal Carrier. (Please forgive the sound quality, it was one of the first videos we produced in the early stages of the pandemic.)
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