Over pints of beer and glasses of wine all
over Ontario, one question about the McGuinty Liberals keeps
coming up in conversation: "Exactly how stupid are these
guys!?!"
Instead of moving from their Record Breaking
Broken Promises Stage onto doing something, anything of a
constructive or creative nature, they're focused on fixing
things that aren't broken.
Selling the LCBO is almost as dumb an idea as
selling our highways to Spanish pirates. (And hasn't that
worked out well?)
The LCBO is well run, staffed with
knowledgeable, pleasant people who don't go on strike. And it
makes money. Louder for those MPPs snoozing in the back of the
legislature: IT MAKES A TON OF MONEY!
Last year the LCBO put $1.04 billion into the
Ontario treasury. And we all know how the MPPs are going to
make up that $1.04 billion after they sell the LCBO. They will
come up with a whole bunch of new taxes with names that don't
sound like taxes.
Sell the LCBO and the private corporation
will cut the employees' decent salaries in half, hire fast food
restaurant graduates and by marketing profit over taste, give
Blue Nun its very own section.
We don't need a panel of Liberal cronies
making $1,000 a day to "look at all aspects of the sale and
distribution of alcohol in the province." We need the MPPs to
look at the receipts - $1.04 billion annually.
What the Liberals really should do is
identify a lot more areas of sale, service or distribution and
create provincial institutions as well run and profitable as
the LCBO. And reduce our taxes accordingly.
How stupid are these guys? With the BYOB
restaurant bill, they made MADD even madder, and now they want
to upset the rest of us too?
William Thomas
Wainfleet