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Ontario Premier Doug Ford pretends to drink from a beer can and Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy holds one at an announcement saying the province is speeding up the expansion of alcohol sales, in Toronto on May 24, 2024.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press

Ontario’s push to speed up making it easier to buy beer and wine comes with a tab that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Allowing residents to buy these products in more locations is sound policy. But having the public purse take a $600-million hit to accelerate this change by only 17 months is, well, spending money like a drunken sailor.

Premier Doug Ford, who set in motion yesterday an early election race, campaigned in both 2018 and 2022 on liberalizing alcohol sales. This space has supported such an approach. There’s no reason why beer and wine shouldn’t be available in corner stores and other convenient locations.

For readers outside Ontario, who wonder why this was not already the case, the province has a restrictive alcohol sales system. Most retail sales are done through the Beer Store, owned by brewers, and the government-run LCBO.

But Mr. Ford’s promise to change that faced an inconvenient reality: the province had a 10-year deal with the Beer Store that limited other retailers getting in on their action. The deal would have run out at the end of this year, which was comfortably before Ontario next went to the polls, scheduled under the province’s fixed-election-date law for mid-2026.

Problem was, Mr. Ford didn’t want to wait. He has long angled for an early election and wanted this policy done.

So his government moved up the timetable. In the spring of 2024, Ontario announced plans to expand legal alcohol sales at grocery stores and allow them at convenience and big-box shops – focused on low-test options such as beer, wine, cider and ready-to-drink cocktails. By the start of August last year, this new regime was being rolled into place.

But at such a cost.

A report Monday from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, a provincial watchdog, shows there are two distinct sets of costs associated with liberalizing sales. Allowing the deal to expire would have cost a projected $817-million over the remainder of the decade. Accelerating the deal means an additional $612-million.

The FAO’s report also includes better and worse scenarios. A number of factors, including how new retailers price alcohol, how many consumers change where they buy and whether drinking habits evolve, will determine the actual cost of this policy change.

The total cost for accelerating the policy change could be as low as $508-million or as high as $891-million. Remember, this is to make beer and wine more widely available 17 months sooner.

The cost works out to between $30-million and $52-million per month. Convenience comes at a price.

Also worth highlighting are the underlying reasons for the financial hits. If the government had let the deal expire and then liberalized sales, most of the loss would have been due to lower tax revenues.

That loss comes because traditional alcohol retailers were subject to beer and wine taxes, while grocery, convenience and big-box stores are not. Although inconvenient to provincial coffers, the projected tax loss would be evidence the policy was being embraced. More people buying from more convenient locations means a drop in tax revenues.

But in order to accelerate the policy change, the government agreed to funnel a large amount of money to the multinational beverage giants that own most of the Beer Store. A total of $225-million in what the FAO calls “industry supports” will be paid this fiscal year and next. In return, the Beer Store has pledged to keep open at least 386 stores until July 1 and 300 until the end of the year.

Mr. Ford recognizes the populist appeal of alcohol and once ran on reducing the base price that brewers can charge for a single beer to $1. Only a few took full advantage and the Beer Store currently doesn’t sell any at that base price.

His latest gambit is less of a gimmick.

Alcohol is more widely available in many other provinces and countries. And doing so won’t kneecap the LCBO. The Crown agency is actually expected to increase its net income, according to the FAO, due to a rise in wholesaling revenue.

Ontario adults are responsible enough to make their own decisions about where to buy alcohol. But the cost Mr. Ford was willing to rack up to push through the change quickly was irresponsible – a reminder that feel-good politics can come with sobering price tag.

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