blogcutter

Here in Ontario, Mr. Buck-a-Beer Ford has announced that early in 2025, we can all expect a nice New Year's gift of $200, courtesy of the Ontario government, a pre-election gimmick that all-told will put about three billion dollars back into Ontarians' pockets. They've been so prudent with their budget, you see, that they can afford to re-gift us with our own money.

My views on better ways of spending that $3B could fill several thick volumes, but I'm not feeling that ambitious today. Instead, I want to look at the beer and booze itself and answer a couple of questions:

1) To what extent have the Ford government's policies enhanced our access to beer, wine and booze in general?

2) How much access SHOULD Ontarians have to beer, wine and other alcoholic beverages?

So here we go. First off, do we have better access to these products now that beer, wine and pre-mixed cocktails can be sold in grocery stores and convenience stores, as well as in Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) outlets?

Well, yes and no. In the Ottawa area at least, we've been able to buy "biere froide" at dépanneurs just by travelling a few metres across a bridge. Wine has also been available at grocery stores and cafeterias in Quebec for as long as I can remember. In Ontario, Ontario beer has long been sold by the Beer Store (formerly Brewers Retail) and wine has been available at private wine stores like the Wine Rack.

Meanwhile at the LCBO, beer has been available (maximum of 6 to a package) and so has wine. Also spirits. But here's the thing. You can get beers from Ontario and international beers but no beer from other provinces or territories in Canada! Same for wine, I think. As for hard liquor? To my knowledge there are no geographical restrictions although what the LCBO stocks is presumably only a small subset of what's available worldwide. I still have the impression that Ontario and international suppliers are favoured over Canadian producer/suppliers from outside Ontario.

In the past decade or so, craft beer producers have surged. During the pandemic, we got beer delivered from Beyond the Pale, located in (Ottawa's) City Centre, soon to open a new location in the By Ward Market. They've continued their local delivery service since things opened up but again, they'll only deliver within Ontario. Distilleries have opened up locally too although I'm not up on most of those, since liquor makes up only a very small proportion of my alcohol purchases.

OK, so let's now look at the second question of how much access we ought to have to alcoholic products.

I've always believed that dire warnings on alcohol bottles and cigarette packages are counterproductive. The more you make something "forbidden fruit", the more attractive it becomes to young people. Growing up, the legal age for consumption of alcohol in public was 21; however, I was allowed a small amount of alcohol at home whenever there was a family celebration, for example for my sisters' and brother's 21st birthday celebrations when I ranged in age from 10 to 13.

By the time I got to university, the legal age for alcohol purchase and consumption had been lowered. I'm embarrassed to say that we hadn't yet reached the era of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and I probably did on occasion get chauffeured by people who possibly had consumed more alcohol than was wise. I don't recall any close calls, but maybe I was just lucky. I'm definitely in favour of having designated drivers whenever alcohol consumption is planned or anticipated.

Recently there's been talk of allowing alcohol consumption in city parks and I'm also in favour of that, provided that inebriated people aren't driving or otherwise being obstreperous. As long as people are exercising due diligence, that's all that matters to me.

As for things like alcohol consumption during pregnancy, I think that pregnant women have a responsibility, if they plan to carry the pregnancy to term, to limit their alcohol consumption, as I did. Expectant fathers? I don't know. I think the jury is still out on that one.

So there we are. That's all I have to say about the matter at the moment.

What impact is the pandemic having on the relationship between Ontario and Quebec, and between anglophones and francophones in whatever part of the country?

Pre-Covid, the impetus towards Quebec sovereignty seemed to have abated. But then came the checkpoints on bridges between Ottawa and Gatineau. And with the 50th anniversary of the October Crisis, the Bloc leader is demanding an apology for the invocation of the War Measures Act and the arbitrary arrest and detention of a number of Quebecers suspected of subversive activities. Mind you, that happened with Ottawans and other people in communities near Quebec's borders, a fact that is conveniently being forgotten.

Another concern is that with public servants' working lives moving online, bilingualism is in decline:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/bilingualism-public-sector-pandemic-1.5780423

With all the work we've done since the Bilingualism and Biculturalism Commission to foster a bilingual working and living environment, we don't want to see it all fall by the wayside!

Then of course there's the younger generation. Kids in French immersion may be struggling to maintain their proficiency in the language. Kids whose parents' first language is neither English nor French are facing even more formidable challenges.

I just finished reading Joanna Goodman's novel The Home for Unwanted Girls. It opens in 1950 and the central character is Maggie, an unwed mother with a francophone mother and anglophone father. Her baby, Elodie, is taken from her at birth and sent to one of Duplessis' "orphanages". Then in the mid-1950s, the orphanage is arbitrarily declared to be a mental institution instead, because the government of the day paid the nuns three times as much money per child to look after mental patients. But the money all goes to a corrupt church while the children are raised in appalling circumstances and see absolutely no benefit from it. Schooling comes to an abrupt end.

Elodie eventually gets to leave institutional life at the age of seventeen, but of course she has practically no life skills for living in an ordinary community. Soon she too finds herself with a child to raise on her own, although fortunately there's a new premier by then and social attitudes have evolved.

I'm now reading a sequel to that book, The Forgotten Daughter.

It does get me thinking, though, about the children of this pandemic. While I'm sure the circumstances in most homes are considerably less grim than those of the Duplessis-era institutions, I do fear for kids in their formative years, unable to establish a reasonable degree of independence and maturity while stuck in their household bubbles. It's something I haven't heard much discussion of, apart from a generalized concern about youth mental health.