Pellerin: Beer with me — Doug Ford could have spent the cash on housing

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If someone could figure out a way to use beer crates for housing, we might just get this province’s government interested in the issue.

You think I’m kidding.

Premier Doug Ford announced on May 24 (May two-four, snort) that the plan he’d previously introduced, then delayed, to liberalize the sale of beer, wine, cider and pre-mixed drinks, would now be sped up because dang it, it’s time.

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Only issue: the contract that gives the Beer Store, owned by a conglomerate of large brewers, a partial monopoly on the sale of beer and cider and such, doesn’t expire until December 2025. Not wanting us to wait a minute longer than September 2024, the premier decided we could just break this contract early, at a cost of $225 million. Which he claims, with a straight face, will result in a profit.

If access to convenient beer were our biggest problem, that might be money well spent.

Perhaps this was a ploy to distract us from senior officials allegedly using their personal email accounts to deal with the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t plan to sacrifice chunks of the Toronto-area greenbelt for the private benefit of friendly developers. Or maybe it was a way to generate goodwill from plonk-thirsty Ontarians in the lead-up to a snap election that might keep Ford in power past a potential Conservative victory at the federal level?

In any case, the beer announcement fell flat, like a room-temperature Labatt 50. A few days later, totally not trying to distract us from the beer flop, Ford’s government announced that the hitherto unbridgeable chasm betwixt itself and the feds on the national housing strategy was magically bridged with a “Team Canada approach,” thereby unlocking $357 million from the feds to build affordable housing units that are critically needed in Ontario.

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I’m not the first one to point out that the $225 million in public dollars paid off to large corporate brewers to break a 10-year contract less than a year-and-a-half before its natural death is perhaps not the absolute best use of precious resources. Maybe your ideas are better than mine. But why not add it to the pile of housing money and — I don’t know — purchase older apartment buildings where rent is lower than market average and keep those buildings available as affordable housing units?

The Ottawa Community Land Trust, a local social enterprise devoted to preserving housing affordability, is doing just that with its brand-new Housing Forever Bond campaign.

It isn’t the only such campaign in Ontario; there’s one in Hamilton, one in Haliburton and one in Kensington Market in downtown Toronto. But let’s just say it’s still a newish idea — and very exciting for the possibilities it opens up, including for people with relatively small amounts to invest.

As OCLT executive director Mike Bulthuis explained in an interview, the campaign seeks to raise $1.72 million towards the preservation of 20 or so affordable rental units in Carlington as well as establish a revolving fund to help acquire more such properties and contribute to preserving the stock of affordable units. Bulthuis is pleased by the level of interest and by local stakeholders pitching in, notably United Way, Lowertown Community Resource Centre and the Sandy Hill Housing Co-operative.

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It’s wonderful and I’m grateful people are stepping up but we shouldn’t have to do this. It would be better if the province regulated the market in ways that put tenants first instead of allowing developers and speculators to call all the shots.

Maybe instead of throwing hundreds of millions of our tax dollars at multinational breweries for the privilege of buying a case of beer at the gas station on the way to the cottage a year-and-a-half ahead of schedule, Premier Ford could focus on fixing actual problems. I’ll bet you it would earn him more votes, too.

Brigitte Pellerin (they/them) is an Ottawa writer.

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