Now the whole story
There are some great and interesting points of all sorts being made here and because I am employed in this business I will now give the truth.
1. LCBO is a monopoly dealing mostly with monopolies Molson, Labatt’s, Diageo, Corby’s. Why? because it is easier for a Government employee to deal with a few big companies than lots of little ones. They also have greater control over their business because they only have to tell a few of their monopoly friends what to do with pricing and marketing as apposed to having to tell many small ones, because some of them might also not agree with their ideas.
2. All liquor boards in Canada except Alberta have minimum pricing of beers, spirits and wines. What does this mean? That a manufacturer who wants to give the consumers of a particular market a lower price, the boards will not allow them to. This means all consumers are paying an inflated price.
3. Why would the boards want consumers to pay more? In every Province (again except Alberta) liquor is taxed as a percentage on cost. The higher the price the board is charged the more taxes the board receives. In Alberta they work on a “flat tax†so every bottle sold is taxed say $13.00 and a supplier can charge a penny with the retail being $13.01 or a $100.00 and the retail then $113.00. In all other markets they want the suppliers to charge an artificial high amount so they can get more taxes from their 170% tax mark up.
4. When the boards want more taxes for the Province, the answer is easy. We get a phone call (they rarely put it in writing for obvious reasons) and say everybody is raising their price $3.00 per case. The they get more taxes and when we tax payers complain the Government simply states “it was not us, but the suppliers increased the prices.â€
5. The best analogy I can use for this is a supplier if I walk into my meeting with LCBO and say I have the exact same product that you sell but mine is $2.00 a bottle cheaper they would throw you out, as it would reduce their revenues. If you walked in and said I have the exact same product but is $2.00 more a bottle, they take you out for lunch! Imagine that conversation at WalMart? I can tell you the best retailer in the world’s response would be exactly opposite… but then again they do not own a monopoly.
6. Some people mentioned advertising. Obviously, it is stupid for a monopoly to advertise! Don’t worry their monopoly supplier friends happily pay for all that and as someone noted it is a profit center. If their supplier friends are finding it costs too much to advertise the boards say “then you all have to raise your prices†Ya more tax revenue.
7. I can guarantee you prices are cheaper in Alberta by huge amounts with an open system. Over Christmas Smirnoff was advertised everywhere for $18.95 and there were Irish Creams advertised for $12.99, and you can buy about 10 different brands of beer for a buck a beer!
8. Selection? Are you kidding me? With most board monopolies there are 1400 lisings while in Alberta there are over 14,000, enough said.
9. Now if you want to get into the cost of buildings, staffing, pensions, unions, and benefits that is a whole other topic but I can guarantee you there is not one liquor employee in Alberta getting near half and likely more like 25% of what a shelf stocker in any Government store makes.
10. There are other things people here mentioned about service, locations, hours etc and use your common sense and guess who has more convenient places to buy liquor, more locations, more competitive pricing, more selection, longer hours, more staff able to assist you… a private enterprise trying to compete with the guy across the street or a monopoly??
11. Lastly I will say of what I know about Alberta it has been privatized for about 18 years and the Province has not turned into a bunch a drunks wondering the streets aimlessly or under age drinkers or anything like that! In fact last time I checked Alberta was doing quite nice with their economy compared to the Communist union run monopoly jurisdictions.
12. I am sure there will be people on this forum that would ague with some of these statements but that is because they are likely employed in one of these fat cat living off the public coffers jobs.
13. So let’s all drink to the continuing price fixing, limited selection where the suppliers & government benefits the most while the boards make record profits and sustain these high paid jobs and we will continue to be a have not Province but we have Alberta to send us transfer payments!!!
14. In the gasoline business consumers ask the Federal Governments to look into price fixing and collusion when in the same governments that is what they do every day in their normal course of business. It is so hypocritical! And don’t think any time soon they will (as they never have) charge any gasoline company with this offense as it is what they do daily in the liquor business.
But really...why SHOULD we have such easy access to alcohol? What benefit is there? Easier drunk-ing? Wow, the benefits will probably be innumerable.
