Remember buck-a-beer? Premier Doug Ford’s promise that he would lower beer prices to a dollar a bottle if he got elected.  
Okay, there may have been some fine print about minimum pricing (whatever that meant) but who's kidding who – the Progressive Conservatives' election message was clear: vote for Ford and enjoy a cold one for only a loonie.  
I was reminded of that promise recently. A Canadian Press news article claimed that the PCs had broken their promise to give the auditor general the power to ensure taxpayer-funded government advertising wasn’t partisan in nature.  
Although I am sure that whoever wrote that article had the best of intentions, I kept asking myself whether anyone really cares. Did it sway any votes in the last provincial election? I follow provincial politics closely and I didn’t even know about that promise.   
Compare that issue to buck-a-beer. Not only was everyone aware of the promise — it was one of the most popular Ontario election searches on Google — but I would argue that it did sway voters. The chattering classes may have made fun of it, but for a lot of ordinary Ontarians it was an important commitment.
Yet with an election on the horizon, why is nobody is talking about how the Ford government broke that promise? 
Before going any further, I have a confession to make. When I first heard about the buck-a-beer commitment in the last election, the cutthroat political strategist in me admired the move. In my opinion the Ford campaign had managed to produce a promise that elegantly reinforced the Conservatives' populist message. 
And remember, populist doesn’t simply mean popular. Populist politics is a form of manipulation. It involves trying to divide the world into two groups in order to pit them against each other — ordinary, hard-working, rule-abiding folks who never seem to get ahead and everyone else, or the elite, who like to do nothing more than feather their nests and the leeches and welfare bums who like to do nothing more than suck the system dry. 
Promising to lower the price of beer sent a clear message to the first group that Doug Ford and the PCs were on their side. Beer is the drink of regular folks and who wouldn’t want to save a few bucks on a two-four? While other parties were talking about universal basic income pilot programs or vague notions of somehow making health care better (like we had never heard that before), the PCs were making a simple, understandable promise that would make life just a little bit easier for the regular guy and gal.  
Although I understood the politics of the promise, I was also one of a handful of people who knew that it was totally bogus. I spent lots of time on the beer file when I was at Queen’s Park (I had a brewery in my community). It is a complex industry with lots of rules and regulations. One of the more obscure ones is that the government dictates a minimum price to discourage binge drinking and prevent price manipulation by large manufacturers aimed at pushing small players out of the market.  
All that was being proposed by Ford was to lower this minimum price to one dollar — with absolutely no guarantee that any brewery would ever move to that level. In fact, since the cost of beer production was way above a dollar, it was next to impossible that it would ever happen.    
These aren’t the types of details that get discussed in campaigns and we all know what happened — the PCs won the election and except for a few short-lived promotions, Ontarians never enjoyed the dollar beer they were promised.
So why is this important?
First, there is the question of accountability. Buck-a-beer was an important promise in the last election and as Ontarians begin to focus on next June’s vote, they have every right to ask Conservative candidates to explain themselves. Let’s hope it frequently gets raised at both all-candidates debates and on the doorstep. 
But this isn’t just about the Ford government. As every political party prepares their platform, they need to be wary about promises that they know can’t be kept.  In 2003 I ran for a party that was going to stop development on the Oak Ridges moraine and lower tolls on highway 407 — even though it was highly doubtful that either could be achieved. 
Political platforms are not perfect documents and there will always be promises that are aspirational at best. But is it too much to ask that political parties not try to manipulate voters with promises that they know are unachievable? Our democracy is more fragile than we think and fiascos like buck-a-beer only fuel voter cynicism and undermine our institutions. And although its importance in the light of a global pandemic might be minimal, it still represents a betrayal that shouldn’t be forgotten. 
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John Milloy is a former MPP and Ontario Liberal cabinet minister currently serving as the director of the Centre for Public Ethics and assistant professor of public ethics at <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/luther.wlu.ca/__;!!AlmGDlt8!ndgaT80H0iz9weB5It5f4U68ipGaiTVN8aFYUz1TquJTCELuYm0I-mwD_hmrwrwHkw$" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="0">Martin Luther University College</a>, and the inaugural practitioner in residence in Wilfrid Laurier University’s <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/students.wlu.ca/programs/arts/political-science/index.html__;!!AlmGDlt8!ndgaT80H0iz9weB5It5f4U68ipGaiTVN8aFYUz1TquJTCELuYm0I-mwD_hlUQ7ggVA$" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="1">Political Science department</a>. He is also a lecturer in the University of Waterloo’s <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/uwaterloo.ca/master-of-public-service/__;!!AlmGDlt8!ndgaT80H0iz9weB5It5f4U68ipGaiTVN8aFYUz1TquJTCELuYm0I-mwD_hlBHa6V3Q$" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="2">master of public service program</a>. John can be reached at <a href="mailto:jmilloy@luther.wlu.ca" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="3">jmilloy@luther.wlu.ca</a> or follow him on Twitter @<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/twitter.com/JOHN_MILLOY__;!!AlmGDlt8!ndgaT80H0iz9weB5It5f4U68ipGaiTVN8aFYUz1TquJTCELuYm0I-mwD_hljY-N0lQ$" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="4">John_Milloy</a>.

Milloy: Why we shouldn’t forget Ford’s broken buck-a-beer promise

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