Ontario's economic development minister said the prospect of selling beer and wine in large grocery stores is less about revenue, and more about enhancing the retailing experience for customers.
"There may be opportunities there for additional investment in transit and infrastructure, but primarily what Ed Clark is looking at are opportunities to enhance customer service," Brad Duguid said Friday morning, referring to the expert panel on government assets being chaired by Clark, the former TD Bank CEO.
"While that's not what he was initially set up to do, I think it's certainly something that we have an obligation to consider as a government."
Duguid also stressed the government would wait for the final report from the Clark panel, and no decisions had been made.
The new details on allowing beer and wine to be sold in large grocery stores were <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2015/03/13/large-grocers-will-get-wine-beer-under-liberals-plan-cohn.html">leaked to The Toronto Star</a> and published Friday morning.
"Potentially hundreds of Ontario’s larger supermarkets — from among the roughly 1,500 located across the province — would initially be permitted to sell craft beer and major national brands on their premises," the report said.
"As many as 200 large grocers could also be licensed to carry Ontario and imported wines in their stores for the first time in the province’s highly regulated history."
It said the move has "the strong support of Clark and the premier’s key advisers," but has not been debated in the Cabinet or the Liberal caucus yet.
Duguid said it is "something I think there's a great deal of enthusiasm within the government to receive."
Ontario Craft Brewers released a statement that said it "appreciates the effort that government and others are putting into the discussion of improving retail access for Ontario Craft Brewers."  However, the organization is still concerned about shelving fees and any rules that force craft brewers "to be trapped in the distribution system of any large players."
"We will continue to work with government on this and follow the process they have laid out," OCB president John Hay said.
For their part, the opposition parties accused the Liberals of leaking the story to distract from the Sudbury bribery scandal and budget woes.
"It's obvious to me that the main motivation is to wring out revenue, rather than address the wasteful overspending that we've seen," Vic Fedeli, the PC finance critic, told QP Briefing.
"It's distracting us from the real discussion at budget, which will be debt and deficit. Instead they're feeding us lots of sexy stories about beer and wine."
He said the party is broadly in favour of liberalizing beer sales, but said it shouldn't favour large grocery chains over smaller stores.
The NDP's Gilles Bisson, who spoke at Queen's Park on another subject Friday morning, said the NDP both opposes liberalizing beer sales and thinks the whole thing is a distraction.
"This is not the first time I've seen the government make noises on this and do nothing, it's often a bit of a bait-and-switch on their part," he said.
He said discussions about creating better conditions for producers and consumers should happen "within the system that we have now, we don't open it up in the way that's being proposed."

Beer Store reforms are about enhancing customer service, Duguid says

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