Ontario’s Beer Store monopoly plays ‘community’ card in new ads

The Beer Store in Ontario is stepping up efforts to maintain its grip over the province’s multi-billion-dollar retail beer trade — something small convenience store operators are clamouring to get a piece of.

Enlisting the help of four-time world curling champion Glenn Howard in a new ad campaign, The Beer Store indirectly suggests that if beer sales were opened up to other retailers, youth could end up getting their hands on beer more easily.

“I think we all have a responsibility to look out for Ontario’s kids and to protect our communities. At The Beer Store it’s a commitment we take to heart,” Howard says in the ad.

Howard goes on to tell viewers the privately-owned retail chain’s 7,000 employees refused more than 110,000 patrons last year who were either intoxicated or under the legal age of 19.

“It’s just the right thing to do and that’s always the right call,” Howard, who’s a Beer Store manager in Midland, Ont., says.

The Beer Store is owned by a trio of foreign beer conglomerates: Belgium-based Anheuser-Busch InBev (which owns Labatt Brewing in Canada), Molson Coors and Japan’s Sapporo (which owns a smaller stake via its Sleeman Breweries).

READ MORE: Federal watchdog probing Ontario’s Beer Store monopoly

Critics of Ontario’s model, which sells beer, wine and spirits exclusively through The Beer Store and LCBO, have long complained it has led to higher prices for Ontarians compared to other regions like Quebec, where alcohol sales have been opened up to convenience and grocery stores.

A study commissioned by the Ontario Convenience Stores Association published last August by University of Waterloo economics professor Anindya Sen found the average price difference in a 24-bottle case of beer in Ontario compared to Quebec is about $9.50, or 27 per cent cheaper in Quebec.

READ MORE: Ontario convenience stores push to break Beer Store monopoly 

According to the study, that price differential amounts to at least a $700 million in additional revenue for The Beer Store’s owners.

In December, Global News reported that the federal Competition Bureau had opened up a review into the provincial monopoly.

The Beer Store has rejected the claim that Ontarians pay higher prices from a lack of competition. The organization says the Waterloo study included taxes in Ontario but excluded them for its Quebec comparison.

The Beer Store has even advanced a claim that allowing convenience stores or super markets to sell beer could lift prices.

The Beer Store generated $2.7 billion in sales in 2012, according to its public report. It paid $1.1 billion to the province in taxes.

Here’s the ad: