Forget local. Doug Ford likes his beer cheap.
Doug Ford Plans to Bring Back Buck-a-Beer in Desperate Plea for Support as Ontarians Thirsty for Change Head to the Polls
Tomorrow, as we head to the polls to elect a new leader for the Ontario Premiership, don't vote for Doug Ford if you like to support your local breweries.
If the thought of having to stare into that furrowed brow and bulging ignorance for the next couple of years is still insufficient in swinging your vote to any other breathing candidate this election, Doug Ford has once again opened his mouth to allow another continuous stream of uninformed spittle to fall from his bottom lip. In a desperate attempt to make gains with the lower-income vote, our regrettable PC candidate seeks to bring back buck-a-beer consumer pricing to allow his constituency to throw back cheap suds in celebration of what could very well be a victory for his party tomorrow.
Much like his promise to do away with CBC funding, Doug Ford continues to reveal his uninformed, front yard BBQ, beer-driven political philosophy in just about every public statement made throughout his campaign.. Put aside the fact you might want to join the man in a round of this cheap, foreign beer and understand that in doing so, you would contribute to the devaluation of Ontario Craft Brewers across the province.
The market for alcohol in Ontario is as outdated as it is biased, maintaining prohibition-era regulations that allow the largest brewing conglomerates in the the world, Molson-Coors, Anheuser-Busch InBev and Sapporo, to march onward with monopoly control of large-format beer sales through The Beer Store. If your local craft brewery wants to grow their business and distribute through this channel, they have to pay to play, meaning small-scale operations have to pay their biggest competitor for the privilege of being on the same shelf.
What about the LCBO?
The final letter in LCBO stands for Ontario and yet it makes available an insulting amount of shelf space to the approximately 250 local breweries currently in operation, each struggling to put their product in front of Ontario shoppers. It is hard enough for these small-scale producers to remain competitive among a rapidly growing number of just local breweries in recent years. If Doug Ford is permitted to reduce the minimum cost per container of beer, it'll simply be one more blowjob to their international competition, who by now must want nothing more than to roll over and get some sleep before business as usual tomorrow.
Macro breweries can bring their cost down to the bare minimum because that is their quality standard. These major players can put a bottle of beer together for pennies. On the other foot, micro breweries in Ontario are faced with one of the most heavily regulated markets for alcohol in the world, and those regulations inhibit their ability to compete in a market that blatantly favours international competition. In this final puff of political chorting, Doug Ford is devaluing the arduous work of Ontario Craft Brewers as they struggle to compete in an antiquated marketplace for alcohol.
In short, vote NDP.
If beer isn't your thing, just remember that a PC victory tomorrow will only help secure a provincial path to the kind of violent bipartisanship on full display south of the border. Andrea Horwath might not be the most exciting candidate, but she's reasonable... and if nothing else, a vote favouring reason is a far better choice than one based on a beer.
A plan for Ontario? No, Doug. It's a plan to support The Beer Store at the expense of our local industry. Instead of stocking LCBO shelves with international product, why don't we support our local industry? If there's room after that, go ahead shove that case of Coor's on the bottom shelf where it belongs.
Cheers.
Disagree? Join the conversation in the comments below.