Chis Selley: Ontario’s freakout over booze in 7-Elevens is pure classism

Ontario politics in recent weeks has played out as something like a real-time satire of itself, with the Latent Methodist Brigade still insisting Premier Doug Ford’s plans for the demon liquor will lead us all to untold poverty and perdition. The news this week has only made them more upset: Japanese convenience store empire 7-Eleven will open licensed areas in 58 of its 59 stores in Ontario, in which you can enjoy an alcoholic drink with your hot dog, nachos or chicken nuggets. The company says it’ll add 60 jobs.

Fifty-eight is not a large number, you will agree, in a province with many thousands of licensed premises, any of which might get you drunk and send you back out to your car or boat (though of course they shouldn’t). Some of those thousands of licensed premises are even attached to gas stations, I can report. And many gas-station convenience stores in Ontario sell beer, wine and liquor as independently run “LCBO agency stores.”

For the record, 7-Eleven announced they were doing this way back in December 2022. Pro-forma neo-puritan controversy ensued, and quickly died down. Two 7-Elevens already operate as licensed restaurants in Ontario, apparently without incident, along with 19 in Alberta. (Unfortunately, bien-pensant Ontarians are trained from birth to believe Alberta’s liquor-retail reforms in the 1990s were a grotesque misadventure that everyone there regrets.)

Nevertheless, the same pro-forma neo-puritan freakout is playing out again.

“Let me get this straight. 7-Eleven locations where people fuel up their cars will now allow folks to drink on the premises? What could possibly go wrong?” sneered JP Hornick, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union (OPSEU), who was last seen dragging LCBO employees into a disastrous tantrum-cum-strike over expanding retail access.

“We need a government that will focus on real things including bringing down hospital wait times, fixing schools and tackling the housing crisis as their signature achievements, amongst many more,” Toronto Coun. Josh Matlow correctly averred on Twitter … and then, as is the fashion here, went full non-sequitur: “Doug Ford made sure we could drink coolers inside a 7-Eleven.” As if the government decided it could only pick one.

(And can I just say here, any Toronto city councillor complaining about another politician’s lack of “signature achievements” is on bloody thin ice.)

“$2.5 billion in LCBO revenue siphoned off to 7-Eleven and Loblaws,” New Democrat MPP Chris Glover wailed about the government’s plans.

This is even more economically illiterate than usual. It’s annoying enough that so many Ontarians believe the province would have to make less money from booze in a privatized-retail market — even as the province’s open market in cannabis proves (if it needed proving) that it isn’t true.

But $2.5 billion is the entire amount the LCBO paid to Queen’s Park last year. Glover, a former university professor, believes every last penny of that will disappear.

On social media, real people took real time out of a real weekday to gnash their teeth about non-issues.

“They’ll have to fire all the teenagers who work there!”

No, they won’t. Under-18s just won’t be involved in selling booze — you know, the way it works in other restaurants and supermarkets.

“Will staff be trained?”

Of course they’ll be trained. What on earth would make you think they wouldn’t be trained?

“The stores will be a nightmare!”

So don’t go.

And, of course, there’s the ultimate Ontarian comment, which essentially boils down to this: “I don’t want to drink in a 7-Eleven — my feels say it’s gross and stupid — so no one else should be allowed to either.”

Indeed, what’s surprising about this particular freakout, in my view, is the rank classism among the 7-Eleven Truthers — most of whom are on the left and really should know better. We all know that if this were Whole Foods or Farm Boy setting up an in-store licensed cafe, no one would raise an eyebrow — because their menus meet a certain standard of propriety.

“We aren’t a population equipped for convenience store drinking. We’re monsters,” progressive pundit David Moscrop opined on X, boiling down this worldview to its purest essence. These people do not trust the unwashed to have a beer with a hot dog except in socially acceptable locations like sporting venues … and even then they’re rather they didn’t.

I could mention here that Ontario, home of the mustard-stained booze monster, has the safest roads of any province (per Transport Canada); that fewer in Ontario than in any other province report drinking at all in the previous year (per the Canadian Addiction Survey); and that the per-person social costs attributable to alcohol use are lower in Ontario than in any other province (per the Canadian Substance Use Costs and Harms project, which excludes Quebec).

I could mention those things, but I know what the response will be: “That’ll all change in a week once fewer than 60 7-Elevens in a province of 14 million people start selling White Claws.”

This is the Upper Canadian temperament. There’s nothing to be done about it except ignore it and power through. The Ford government has spent unconsciobable amounts of money rolling out these reforms a year early, for reasons known only to itself, but you can bet that once they’re implemented, they will never be rolled back. Consumers win.

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