Beer Store Privatization

The Beer Store contract was not a vague policy commitment Ford could quietly abandon. It was a legally binding 10-year agreement, signed by the previous Liberal government in 2015, that gave The Beer Store (jointly owned by Molson, Labatt, and Sleeman) exclusive rights to sell 12- and 24-packs of beer until 2025. Ford broke it in 2024 and wrote a cheque for $225 million of public money — the equivalent of $382,653 per day — to exit the agreement 18 months early. No voter asked for this. No emergency required it. It was a political choice to accelerate a policy benefiting specific corporate interests on an arbitrary timeline, at a cost of a quarter-billion dollars.

The framing was always about consumer convenience — beer in corner stores, wine with your groceries. But the financial reality, documented by the province's independent Financial Accountability Office in January 2025, is a $1.4 billion net cost to Ontario taxpayers by 2030. The largest component — $1.28 billion — is lost tax revenue. Alcohol sold through the LCBO and Beer Store was subject to significant provincial markups and taxes that funded public services. Alcohol sold through Loblaws, Circle K, and Costco is not. Every bottle of wine sold at a grocery store instead of an LCBO is a bottle of foregone public revenue.

The beneficiaries of this arrangement are not hard to identify. The Retail Council of Canada — whose members include Loblaws, Metro, Sobeys, Walmart, and Costco — had lobbied intensively for expanded alcohol retail access. The Convenience Industry Council of Canada, representing Circle K and oil company-owned convenience chains, had done the same. These corporations now capture the profit margin on alcohol sales that previously supported Ontario's public finances. The Ford government accelerated their windfall by 18 months and billed taxpayers $225 million for the privilege.

The LCBO itself, in confidential corporate projections, forecast losing $600 million to $915 million in annual retail sales as a direct result of the privatization. As a Crown corporation whose profits flow to the provincial treasury, every dollar lost at the LCBO is a dollar not available for hospitals, schools, or transit.

The immediate human cost fell on LCBO workers. In July 2024, more than 9,000 LCBO employees walked off the job in the first strike in the Crown corporation's 98-year history. They were fighting for job security in the face of a privatization plan that everyone understood would eventually mean fewer LCBO stores and fewer LCBO jobs. The two-week strike ended with a contract, but the underlying threat — the systematic hollowing out of a public retail network — remained intact.

Beer Store locations began closing across Ontario as the business case for standalone alcohol retail collapsed. Communities that had relied on Beer Store locations — particularly in smaller towns where they were the only nearby option — lost them with no public consultation.

The FAO's $1.4 billion figure only covers impacts to December 2030. The long-term structural shift — permanently redirecting alcohol tax revenue from the public treasury to private retailers — will compound for decades. Ontario is not just losing $1.4 billion; it is permanently restructuring who profits from alcohol sales in the province, in favour of some of the country's wealthiest corporations.

Ford celebrated the policy as a victory for "the people" who wanted to buy beer at a corner store. The people who actually benefited were the shareholders of Loblaws, Sobeys, and Costco — who received a regulated market handed to them by government decree, at public expense, without competitive tender.