Beer in corner stores isn’t a huge issue. But there could be more than superficial benefits to extracting the rod that’s stuck up Ontario’s butt.
Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government is doing a roaring trade in what could reasonably be seen as trivialities: buck-a-beer, booze in corner stores, legalized tailgate parties. Easier access to vice gets major billing in Finance Minister Vic Fedeli’s first budget, released Thursday: More pages are devoted to drinking and gambling than to lowering energy bills.
In point of fact, however, fiscal conservatives will not be thrilled by this budget. Whereas the Liberals’ 2018-19 spendathon projected $163.5 billion in total spending for 2019-20, Fedeli’s document projects … $163.4 billion. It foresees returning to balance only a year earlier than the Liberals did, in 2023-24, while increasing annual total spending at almost exactly the rate the Liberals had proposed. And naturally, the doomsayers will not be mollified, either.
Fancy a wager? The government plans to open up the market for legal online gambling, and devotes an entire page to quotes from pro sports commissioners arguing for single-event sports betting. It promises expanded casino operations in Chatham, Innisfil and Rexdale, and new ones in Peterborough and Pickering. In Ford’s future Ontario, you’ll be able to buy lottery tickets on your phone.
Unlike many novel and ambitious things Ford might do in government, it’s easy to imagine changes like these lasting: No future premier is likely to remove beer and wine from corner stores or ratchet down the fun level in casinos — especially if they lead to more government revenues, which is likely. Ford’s haters would consider that a laughable legacy.
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