Right Wing Rag aka Fraser Institute?

SGEU warning on privatization lacks credibility

The StarPhoenix

February 26, 2009 3:06 AM

It's in trying to cloak its pure self-interest in sanctimonious claptrap about public safety and crime fighting that the Saskatchewan Government and General Employees' Union undermines its cause and invites derision.

The television and print advertising campaign SGEU recently began to sound the alarm against the privatization of government-run liquor stores in Saskatchewan uses scary-sounding statistics and emotional language that, upon a closer look, is manipulative at best and cynically deceptive in the extreme.

Seemingly elevating to the status of near-angels and guardians of public morality its 900 members employed at Saskatchewan Liquor Board outlets in 64 communities, the SGEU ads suggest privatizing liquor sales would translate into every evil from an increase in crime rates and social problems to profit-driven private vendors selling to underage youth.

SGEU workers at liquor stores may well be trained to deal with minors and intoxicated individuals, but that doesn't make them morally superior to private business owners whose livelihood depends on abiding by the law if they are allowed to sell liquor. As the union very well knows, there are many private vendors acting as agents of the SLB in small towns across Saskatchewan who take their responsibilities seriously and are just as diligent in checking the ID of young people and refusing to sell to drunks.

SGEU notes that the number of liquor stores in Calgary "increased by a staggering 620 per cent" by 2002 since Alberta privatized liquor vending in 1993, and that Edmonton police reported a 164-per-cent increase in alcohol-related charges between 1993 and 1999.

What it doesn't say is that the growth in the number of liquor outlets may well have been a rational market response to serve a city that may have been grossly underserved by the public sector stores and whose rapid growth in a working-age demographic over that period necessitated additional stores.

And it's possible, too, that Edmonton police began to crack down harder on alcohol-related charges and the boom in Fort McMurray translated into more young people with more cash in their pockets spending more of their free time partying at bars in the city. Without context, it's silly to blame any of that on Alberta's move to privatize its liquor stores.

This SGEU messaging is part of an ongoing union anti-privatization campaign that bespeaks of problems that have befallen Canadians, from toll-highways in New Brunswick and Ontario to the selloff of public assets in Saskatchewan in the Devine era to the Walkerton water tragedy and the listeriosis outbreak, after governments turned over to the private sector jobs formerly done by public sector workers.

Although Premier Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party government ill-advisedly has adopted a hands-off policy on privatizing any Crown agencies including its liquor stores, the SGEU ads seem to be a shot across the bow of the government over its recent decision to allow the opening of two private wine stores that will sell specialty products not currently sold at SLB stores.

It may be the case, that as the SGEU says, public liquor stores create well-paying jobs for its members and that the wages of liquor store employees in Alberta were reduced in half since privatization. But ultimately the liquor stores ostensibly are run to serve the needs of the public, not primarily of those who work at them.

Those lower wages earned by those who work for the private vendors in Alberta translate into cheaper prices on the shelves -- a concept that many SGEU members who shop at the Wal-Marts and Superstores well understand as they go about their daily lives.

However, what's most egregious is SGEU's attempt to mislead the public on the $173.6 million in profits that accrued to the government from liquor sales. The suggestion is that privatizing the liquor stores would deprive the government of revenues that now go to fund public services such as schools and hospitals, ignoring the fact that private companies do pay taxes and that the government, which would still act as the liquor wholesaler, would continue to take its cut.

Only those who equate their self-interest with the general public's would dare to accuse their entrepreneurial neighbours of moral decrepitude and criminality that'll see minors given ready access to booze, neighbourhood safety threatened and the public treasury plundered.

It's enough to make one wonder if copious quantities of shelf products aren't being sampled when SGEU poobahs sit down to write up their ad campaigns.

"But ultimately the liquor stores ostensibly are run to serve the needs of the public, not primarily of those who work at them....Those lower wages earned by those who work for the private vendors in Alberta translate into cheaper prices on the shelves -- a concept that many SGEU members who shop at the Wal-Marts and Superstores well understand as they go about their daily lives."

Sure they do. While we're at it, let's cut all good paying jobs, knock everyone to minimum wage, let a few people in the country control all the wealth so that we can all shop at Walmart and Superstore and be subsidized by welfare. When we all end up in jail because we resort to crime to subsidize our income, we won't have to worry about booze sales because it's a controlled substance in the slammer.

Brilliant article brainiac. You sure you haven't been slipping across the border to sample copious amounts of cheap shelf wares when writing your columns?