Hudak wants a slightly smaller price floor on beer

I first wrote about the price floor for beer in Ontario being raised from $24/case to $25.60/case in this 2008 post: McGuinty Raising Price Floor for Beer. As far as I could tell at the time of posting that, John Tory never really mentioned this as being unfair (he may have later come out against this, probably a moot point now to search).

Now Tim Hudak is the leader of the Ontario PC Party and he seems to be considering going back to the 2008 price floor on beer. I suppose this is an improvement, but Hudak is justifying the existence of this silly price floor. A buck a beer was too expensive in the first place. For the exact same products in other jurisdictions, you can get beer much cheaper than $1/beer.

The price of beer in Ontario (in many provinces) is impacted both by federal and provincial sin taxes that go to the government and the price floors that are implicit taxes that go to private companies. As I've talked about before with Quebec, the big brewers obviously are huge fans of the price floors.

If Tim Hudak is serious about lowering the price of beer in Ontario, there are two areas to do this. The first step will be the remove the price floor. This is more unfair than taxes because it just benefits private business at the expense of taxpayers, instead of at least theoretically going towards something that benefits the taxpayer. The provincial sin taxes should also be lowered because the affects the price of all beer, not just the lower priced varieties. This would give a break to all beer consumers, regardless if the purchase the cheapest or the most expensive beer in the province.

I'm hoping Hudak saying he wants the buck a beer back wasn't the whole policy and just an off the cuff response. It is a step in the right direction, but a step so small that it is barley worth mentioning. It is also probably too small to be worth the political fight with MADD and other neo-prohibitionist groups.