Improve Service yes, privatization no
I'm not a fan of the privatization model, per se, for a few reasons.
1) The LCBO is net profitable, above and beyond liquor taxes, and provides an on-going stream of revenue which contributes to the Provincial budget. Were that revenue gone, taxes go up or services go down. YES, the revenue could be replaced by enhancing liquor taxes or 'leasing' retail licenses, however this would neutralize any pricing advantage to having competition.
2) If you privatize without breaking up the LCBO and without have a competitive environment in place, what you get is another BEER STORE. Which while impressive from an environmental perspective (the return program) it pretty much sucks at everything else. Meanwhile you've privatized the profit and granted a new monopoly. If you break up the LCBO and remove its monopoly you MAY get some pricing or convenience benefits, but you wont' get a good sale price on the assets. After all who wants to buy a business at full value that's about to lose a monopoly, be broken up, be required to changes brand names (since LCBO is a gov't agency name), and will certainly lose at least 1/2 its market share. There's very little winning proposition there, so you'll get 20c on the dollar selling it.
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Now, that said, the LCBO/Current retail liquor sales model does have issues.
1) Minimum pricing. While I don't want to see wine going out the door at a $1.00 a bottle; that would surely foster social ills, neither does it need to be priced, at its low end, at the minimum of $6.50 (current LCBO policy)
This has the effect of making the European experience of having wine with dinner most evenings a good deal more expensive for the 'average' family.
There is no real justification for that.
According to ......someone I know.... a major Ontario winery wanted to promote the 'table wine' culture through the LCBO a few years ago.
They specifically offered to sell the LCBO decent (not great) wine, at about $2 to $3 a bottle with the aim of selling it at $5.00 per bottle retail.
The LCBO flatly refused said offer, saying it was not willing to lower the 'minimum price'.
That seems quite unreasonable, but one need not privatize to fix that, one simply needs to direct the LCBO to lower the minimum sell price to $5.00
With respect to beer the minimum price is established by provincial regulation at $24.00 for a 24 (or a buck a beer).
This could also be lowered, to say .80c a beer, or about $19.50 a case. Few brewers would go that low, but some would.
2) Hours of operation. The LCEEB does not need to make every store extended hours. But in a City like T.O. having no store open after 11, on a Friday/Sat. night is ridiculous.
It should be noted that when I was younger, they used to keep Summerhill (back before it was fancy) open till midnight on the weekends; so they've actually cut service.
I think it would be quite reasonable to bring the extended hours stores up to midnight on the weekends, 11 on weeknights and to have Sunday service go till 9pm.
While most smaller stores only really require slightly later Sunday hours, say till 7pm would be fine.
The LCEEB knows this is an issue, particularly the Sunday hours, and have quietly started expanding hours to 11-6 at some locations.
Apparently they don't want to go beyond that because they don't want to trigger the need for 2 shifts on Sundays. Why they can't just use a few part-timers for this is beyond me.
3) Stores. The LCEEB knows how to build nice stores. What it doesn't do is fix enough of the older ones; or build enough small ones for urban areas.
This can easily fixed. Its simply that the LCEEB doesn't want to spend the money right now, cause it doesn't have to. The gov't can give back $50M per year for a couple of years for new CAP-EX and the problem will be solved.
Much cheaper to Gov't than losing the monopoly.
