People Priortize Needs

Kelly McParland: Keep the LCBO monopoly; privatize Toronto

Posted: June 24, 2009, 2:49 PM by NP Editor

The crowd at the LCBO, where I was stocking up along with everyone else on Tuesday, seemed surprisingly cheerful despite the anticipated onset of a summer booze strike (since averted).

The wiry little guy in front of me was buying 25 hip-sized bottles of hooch, enough to keep drinking on the job for another five weeks. An old geezer to the rear was trying to balance three bottles on his walker as he waited his turn. A young lady in the next line confessed she’d lost her summer job when city workers marched out on strike, and now was hoarding booze before a second union could steal that from her.

The cashier was surprisingly cheerful, offering three times to have someone carry the bags, like I was old or something. The carry-out guys looked frazzled, spending the hottest day of the year running back and forth, humping bags and boxes of bottles across a sizzling parking lot to waiting trunks. Nonetheless there were lots of them, and the cash registers were all whizzing -- management seems to have anticipated the rush and bulked up on staff.

Which, along with the mood, goes to the difference between the possible LCBO walkout, and the meaner, grimmer city-wide strike of municipal employees. Toronto’s 24,000 inside and outside workers are picketing to protect a ridiculous luxury no one but public employees could defend; they work for a union-friendly political leadership that already pays them generous wages and guarantees their jobs for life, no matter how they perform.

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