LCBO workers face an uphill battle

In case you hadn’t noticed, most of the LCBO is closed for business.

- MARTIN REGG COHN

In midsummer, in the middle of a heat wave, some 680 stores are shuttered by a strike — have been since last week.

What’s a parched drinker to do? Where’s a busy party planner to go?

Don’t panic. But spare a thought, if not a drop, for the future of the LCBO — and its workers.

As Doug Ford boasted this week, there is no shortage of alternative locations to get what you need in this post-Prohibition province. In a video released Monday, the teetotalling premier clutches a can of craft beer after opening his laptop to show you precisely how to search an online map for alcohol sales near you.

Provocative, to be sure. But that’s Ontario’s new reality.

In summers past, the stakes were so much higher. The media whipped Ontarians into a frenzy of panic-buying at the mere mention of a possible strike.

Front page headlines counted down the days to the bargaining deadline. Drinkers lined up around the block to stock up in case of a shutdown.

Until recently, the LCBO held a virtual monopoly on wine and spirits sales. Which is why the government of the day paid higher wages to avoid leaving Ontarians high and dry.

While the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents LCBO workers, is trying to protect jobs, the strike appears to be trying to persuade Ontarians they should go back to fewer outlets and fewer choices, Martin Regg Cohn writes.