Few facts behind Ford’s alcohol policies
Doug Ford’s approach to policy making deftly avoids being confounded with facts. This is most evident in his approach to alcohol, where in a few short weeks, he’s lowered minimum price, opened the way to thousands of new convenience and big box store outlets, kept LCBOs open to 11 p.m., pushed bar openings back to 9 a.m., reintroduced happy hour, introduced free drinks in casinos and legalized tailgate parties.
And to top things off, he has cancelled a planned penny-a-beer increase in alcohol prices. His rationale? All are driven by buzzwords such as “modernization,” “alcohol reform,” “giving consumers more choice and convenience” and creating “more opportunities for businesses in the beverage alcohol sector.”
What Ford fails to understand is three overriding facts.
Alcohol problems represent a huge cost to the Ontario government, and these costs far exceed revenue derived from alcohol sales. A 2012 report by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA) pegged these costs at $465.4 million more than revenues. Every drink sold is a net loss to government.
Policies that increase overall consumption correspondingly increase the percentage of drinkers who exceed Canada’s low-risk drinking guidelines — these are the very people who experience problems and account for costs.
A Canadian consolidation of world research identified the major contributors to increased consumption, problems, and costs are:
No. 1. Price.
No. 2. The number of sales outlets.
No. 3. Private sector involvement.
No. 4. Hours of sale.
Every one of Ford’s policy measures aligns with increasing consumption and the associated burden of alcohol problems. In so doing, the gap between provincial alcohol revenue and costs will widen. This comes at a time when the health and social service budgets are already under duress simply dealing with existing problems, let alone the spin-off policing and judicial system costs.
Ford’s initiatives follow an already massive increase in alcohol availability introduced by the Wynne government. Alcohol sales are in the process of being introduced in 450 grocery stores, each capped at $1 million annually. This will create up to $450 million in alcohol sales, the equivalent about 225 million beers.
The research says that sales from outlet expansion will be “additive” rather than “substitutive” — contradicting claims that consumers would simply shift from government to grocery store outlets. Moreover, why else would so many millions be invested if there was no net gain?
Is there demand for greater access to alcohol? Well, the Wynne government ignored research findings by the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health (CAMH) that 92.2 per cent of Ontario adults felt “there should be fewer or the same number of beer stores” and 64 per cent felt “government alcohol retail stores should not be privatized.”
The small minority wanting greater access were overrepresented by heavier drinkers — this is concerning because the top 10 per cent of drinkers consume more than 50 per cent of all alcohol in Ontario.
So, on top of the Wynne government’s major contribution to increased alcohol problems, the Ford government is poised to introduce an even more powerful array of accelerators.
Beyond this, there’s the question of economic impact. Sadly, both the Ford and Wynne governments have foisted one-sided analyses on the public. They ignore the fact that increased spending on alcohol will be offset by reduced spending elsewhere in the economy.
If, for example, alcohol sales in grocery stores alone were to increase by $450 million, this money would have to be reallocated by consumers from elsewhere in the economy. Where are the analyses of such redistribution and its economic impact? What if the Ford measures increase that reallocation by another $1 billion or more? And this is on top of up to $4.5 billion already in the process of being redistributed as a result of gambling “modernization.”
Government policy always entails weighing projected gains against foreseeable deficits, and research has long played a role in clarifying each. In this instance, however, there is a startling lack of consideration for the predictable harm to health, social well-being and the stability of the economy.
At the most fundamental level of consideration, government should not be in the business of knowingly introducing harm to the people it was elected to represent.