Ontario Government (Conservative majority), 2025-29

[Brad Sallows]

I suspect many stores will be re-thinking their liquor licence, particularly if sales aren't all that robust. Very few want to commit the staff and storage space (both usually in short supply) for deposit returns. I was grocery shopping today and had to ask a staffer where a certain item was and, after checking a few logical places, he said that with having to shoe-horn in shelf space for booze, the store ends up shoving other products wherever they can find space.

With the loss of sales, The Beer Store can't economically stick around just as a deposit return service. It would be interesting to know what their numbers are like.

ON obviously structures the requirements differently from BC. Here, convenience stores are often marginal businesses, and having a liquor licence is seen as approximately equivalent to a licence to print money.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Its another case of beggar your neighbour. Instead of us fixing our own problems, we are hoping to pinch these individuals off the US.

BC is doing the same thing, but will take applications from many other places. Where else is this happening, one wonders.

Next time someone has the premiers all together in a room, some gadfly ought to prompt them to consider what is going to happen: "Is your province going to be a winner or a loser in the bidding wars?"

[Add: Also, people trained in Canada will be highly desirable to employers worldwide. We should be training not to capacity, but to overcapacity. Not for profit, but just as the cost of maintaining capacity.]

 

[Czech_pivo]

BC is doing the same thing, but will take applications from many other places. Where else is this happening, one wonders.

Next time someone has the premiers all together in a room, some gadfly ought to prompt them to consider what is going to happen: "Is your province going to be a winner or a loser in the bidding wars?"

[Add: Also, people trained in Canada will be highly desirable to employers worldwide. We should be training not to capacity, but to overcapacity. Not for profit, but just as the cost of maintaining capacity.]

That is a very true statement - training for 'loss' in other words - for just like we steal doctors from Kenya or India or South Africa or the US, the US and parts of Europe are just as actively stealing our doctors. Free mobility of labour.

I've got an old high school friend from Windsor who did 2yrs at U of Windsor in Chemistry, got into U of Ottawa med school, trained then in London, ON at Victoria Hospital as an Orthopedic Surgeon, worked a number of years back in Windsor and then left for Texas 20yrs ago and is making money hand over fist there. He'll never come back. The whole family was a bunch of geniuses - his Dad was a Dr, Mom a Nurse, oldest brother is Doc, next to brothers are Dentist, sister is a Psychiatrist and lastly him an Orthopedic Surgeon. The others all stayed in Canada except for him. The Dad/Mom were trained in the old Yugoslavia back in the early 60's and we got them to come to Canada then. If they had stayed, Canada would have lost 2 Drs, 2 Dentists, a Nurse and a Psychiatrist and the US an Orthopedic Surgeon.

 

[RangerRay]

According to the Interweb, all provinces except Ontario and Manitoba have some manner of deposit-return system for beverage containers.

In Manitoba, you can only return beer bottles and cans to select beer vendors for deposit. Everything else goes in the blue bin. We’re like 80 years behind the times here.

 

[lenaitch]

ON obviously structures the requirements differently from BC. Here, convenience stores are often marginal businesses, and having a liquor licence is seen as approximately equivalent to a licence to print money.

For sure. I imagine a liquor sales licence is similar to a gaming licence. If a convenience store lost its gaming licence for some reason, it usually closed shortly after because lottery is a huge traffic generator.

The problem isn't the sales, but the deposit-return of the containers. I'm not exactly sure how it would work if Ontario went back to a broad-based deposit return system (liquor, soft drink, etc.). There used to be one, years ago, but I imagine the corner store business model has changed much since then

 

[Rifleman62]

Visited a MD the other day in West Kelowna. She is a Resident MD with 3 weeks left in her Residence. Got her education in Ireland which has 5 medical schools. Half her class were Cdns. She is mandatory "posted" to Williams Lake, BC for two years by the BC gov't.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

In Manitoba, you can only return beer bottles and cans to select beer vendors for deposit. Everything else goes in the blue bin. We’re like 80 years behind the times here.

When I was in Alberta in the '80s, the province had dedicated places where you could return your empties, including pop cans/bottles.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Visited a MD the other day in West Kelowna. She is a Resident MD with 3 weeks left in her Residence. Got her education in Ireland which has 5 medical schools. Half her class were Cdns. She is mandatory "posted" to Williams Lake, BC for two years by the BC gov't.

Suspect a number of foreign med schools have a fair number of Canadians & Yanks.

Ontario hospitals tried schemes in the past where they’d pay for part of a doc’s schooling in exchange for a guarantee of x years of service in an underserved area. For some reason, the docs wiggled out of the full return of service term and I never heard of money being clawed back

 

[RangerRay]

When I was in Alberta in the '80s, the province had dedicated places where you could return your empties, including pop cans/bottles.

BC followed suit…in the 2000’s.

In both BC and Alberta, you get deposits back on all beverage containers.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

When I was in Alberta in the '80s, the province had dedicated places where you could return your empties, including pop cans/bottles.

When we had glass pop bottles, every store took empties for deposit, when a case of six got you 12 cents or a comic book.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Remember the Greenbelt fracas?

Ford government obfuscated Greenbelt records through code words: commissioner

TORONTO - Ontario Premier Doug Ford's government broke its legal, record-keeping obligations amid its now-reversed decision to open up parts of the protected Greenbelt lands for housing, the province's information

www.thecanadianpressnews.ca

Some lessons learned from the annual report (highlights mine):

One person's bad record keeping is another's coverup #PoliticalRorschach

 

[The Bread Guy]

Interesting: how liable will landlords (including municipalities or non-profits) be for renting to drug dealers?

Ontario's proposed landlord drug liability law rattles supportive housing providers

The first time Fay Martin read up on the details of a proposed act to make landlords responsible for preventing drug activities in their units in Ontario, she says her hair stood on end. As a founder and board member of Places for People, which rents out 20 affordable units in Haliburton...

uk.news.yahoo.com

Could landlords soon be liable for renting to drug dealers?

Under Bill 10, landlords or directors may be held responsible for illegal drug-related activities within the units they control

www.barrietoday.com

Ontario’s Bill 10: New Risks and Responsibilities for Landlords | Robins Appleby

Understand Ontario’s proposed Bill 10, its impact on landlord liability, non-profit housing, police powers, and the key legal risks it introduces.

www.robinsappleby.com

Here's the bit from the summary of the applicable act that got Royal Assent June 5th (highlights mine):

MEASURES RESPECTING PREMISES WITH ILLEGAL DRUG ACTIVITY ACT, 2025

The Schedule enacts the Measures Respecting Premises with Illegal Drug Activity Act, 2025, which prohibits a person from knowingly permitting a premises of which the person is a landlord to be used in relation to offences under Acts of Parliament that relate to the production or trafficking of a controlled substance or precursor, or of cannabis. The specific offences to which the prohibition applies are to be prescribed by regulation (referred to in the Act as “prescribed offences”). The Act also prohibits knowingly possessing the proceeds of an offence under the Act. Various enforcement provisions and offences are provided for as well as provisions permitting the recovery of costs incurred in relation to the enforcement of the Act and prescribed offences.

 

[Furniture]

Interesting: how liable will landlords (including municipalities or non-profits) be for renting to drug dealers?

Ontario's proposed landlord drug liability law rattles supportive housing providers

The first time Fay Martin read up on the details of a proposed act to make landlords responsible for preventing drug activities in their units in Ontario, she says her hair stood on end. As a founder and board member of Places for People, which rents out 20 affordable units in Haliburton...

uk.news.yahoo.com

Could landlords soon be liable for renting to drug dealers?

Under Bill 10, landlords or directors may be held responsible for illegal drug-related activities within the units they control

www.barrietoday.com

Ontario’s Bill 10: New Risks and Responsibilities for Landlords | Robins Appleby

Understand Ontario’s proposed Bill 10, its impact on landlord liability, non-profit housing, police powers, and the key legal risks it introduces.

www.robinsappleby.com

Here's the bit from the summary of the applicable act that got Royal Assent June 5th (highlights mine):

I suspect the provision would be used to deal with slumlords who knowingly allow dealers to operate out of their units, rather than as a way to go after landlords who accidently end up renting a unit to a dealer.

I'm guessing the bar for "knowingly" will be fairly high.

 

[lenaitch]

Nothing to do with the Ford government, but Hilary Weston, former Lt. Gov. has passed away at age 83. I met her a couple of times and she was an engaging and personable lady.

Hilary Weston, fashion mogul and former Ontario lieutenant-governor, dead at 83

Hilary Weston, an Irish-Canadian fashion mogul and former lieutenant-governor of Ontario who devoted time to issues tied to women, volunteerism and youth, has died at 83.

www.ctvnews.ca

She was also one of the few, if not the only, LG in Ontario who had an actual threat profile because of her Irish heritage and IRA threats.

 

[GK .Dundas]

Nothing to do with the Ford government, but Hilary Weston, former Lt. Gov. has passed away at age 83. I met her a couple of times and she was an engaging and personable lady.

Hilary Weston, fashion mogul and former Ontario lieutenant-governor, dead at 83

Hilary Weston, an Irish-Canadian fashion mogul and former lieutenant-governor of Ontario who devoted time to issues tied to women, volunteerism and youth, has died at 83.

www.ctvnews.ca

She was also one of the few, if not the only, LG in Ontario who had an actual threat profile because of her Irish heritage and IRA threats.

I'm surprised at the possibility of IRA threats .I would have thought that going after a prominent Canadian target would have been counter productive ?

 

[The Bread Guy]

I'm surprised at the possibility of IRA threats .I would have thought that going after a prominent Canadian target would have been counter productive ?

In general I’d agree, but I also suspect it would only take a few hotheads with more memory than common sense to do Uber-dumb things. Especially with a history as sticky & resilient as The Troubles - from the outside looking in, I sense isolated levels of spite that make the Balkans look like a Kumbaya camp.

 

[lenaitch]

I'm surprised at the possibility of IRA threats .I would have thought that going after a prominent Canadian target would have been counter productive ?

Her husband, Galen, was a business owner in Ireland (both sides I think) and was seen as part of the elite. There had been an attempted IRA kidnapping in the early 1980s where a couple of of kidnappers were killed by police.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Her husband, Galen, was a business owner in Ireland (both sides I think) and was seen as part of the elite. There had been an attempted IRA kidnapping in the early 1980s where a couple of of kidnappers were killed by police.

Yup ....

The day the IRA tried and failed to kidnap billionaire retail giant Galen Weston at his Wicklow home

The telephone wires to the lakeside mansion were cut at 4.10am that warm August morning and as dawn broke over the Wicklow hills, two groups of heavily armed men watched for any sign that would indicate the other was on the move.

www.independent.ie

... with his son now, who should be more worried about people grousing about high grocery prices than IRA hit teams

Galen Weston Jr. - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Blackadder1916]

I'm surprised at the possibility of IRA threats .I would have thought that going after a prominent Canadian target would have been counter productive ?

There's "family" and "family business" history involved. Her husband was a target of an unsuccessful IRA kidnapping plot (in the Republic) that resulted in several Provos being wounded and captured by the Garda who were waiting in ambush while Weston (forewarned) was off to the UK playing polo with Prince Charles. An executive of one of the Weston's companies, Tom Tiday, was kidnapped by the IRA and the ransom demand was made to the Weston's company (Associated British Foods). Tiday was rescued before the ransom was paid.

ATTEMPT TO ABDUCT RICH BUSINESSMAN IN IRELAND IS FOILED (Published 1983)

www.nytimes.com

An FBI bust that led to the IRA resorting to kidnapping in the Republic

In "The Kidnapping," Tommy Conlon and Ronan McGreevy explore the FBI's influence on the IRA's operations in the 1980s.

www.irishcentral.com

 

[RangerRay]

I'm surprised at the possibility of IRA threats .I would have thought that going after a prominent Canadian target would have been counter productive ?

IIRC, the IRA declared war on the rest of the Commonwealth as well, but I don’t think they committed any terrorist outrages against any Commonwealth targets that didn’t have a Northern Irish nexus.