A 2012 report from David Campanella, then the public policy research manager for the Parkland Institute, and Greg Flanagan, a public finance economist, concluded that privatization has led to Albertans paying more compared to public stores.
this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2024
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Who would have thought, adding a private profit incentive would mean overall prices go up?
You're supposed to be smarter than us Canada!
Not Alberta
Ah, is Alberta like Alabama?
Yes, but it really wants to be like texas
I more often hear "Canada's Texas".
Lol! What gave you that idea? We signed NAFTA after all.
Privatization in a nutshell.
But hey! I have this GREAT idea for faster medical services!
And transport!
And internet!!!
And schools!!!!!!!
And utilities!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You keep that up and I'm going to mail you a brick.
And brick mailing!
That will be $25 in postage, $30 in shipping and handling, $35 for insurance, and $15 cause we can fucking charge whatever you we want.
Thank you for mailing with us with your prized possessions.
Don't forget the $10 "convenience fee" because you didn't talk to an actual human employee, thus saving the company money, so you have to pay more for that convenience
Every single time
It's so infuriating, and we keep electing politicians who suck corporate dicks and promote privatization.
Say it with me now:
Critical services must be government owned to promote service integrity.
While people might argue against this, if your existence of as a government hinges on the quality of the services you provide, and the only metric is votes, then you're going to do your damnedest to make sure you get the most votes and that means providing the best services.
Conversely, private industry has money as the metric and the best way to get more money is to get people to pay the same for less. It's the easiest way. Who wants to invest in better products/services when we can do less and cut shit and make more money.
Now that's not to say there aren't exceptions, but this is the general theme
There's way more to it than that.
He said consumer prices in Alberta are influenced by supplier-set wholesale prices, store and government markups and the timing of limited-time offers. All the factors at play means it's challenging to track retail price changes over time.
"What I concluded in the data that I looked at in my own study, is that there was some increase in retail prices as a result of privatization, but it was not large," West said.
"But it depends on product category, and the time period."
In addition, when Alberta privatized, it changed the tax system from a percentage of the price to a unit tax.
"It doesn't matter what it costs. The tax is flat," Enoch said. "Which dings lower-cost alcohol, right? Because everything is charged at the same tax rate."
There's other positive things mentioned in this article, too, so what you're doing is almost cherry picking.
None of this refutes what was said above.
Privatization resulted in alcohol prices increasing.
I've also not seen any numbers that suggest that the Alberta government makes more revenue from the private system than they would have a public system.
Every back-of-the-napkin calculation I've done suggests that the move to a private system increases access to alcohol for citizens while reducing the government revenue related to alcohol sales.
Much of Europe is privatized and their prices are much less than here. The main reason our prices are so high is the special alcohol tax the government puts on to discourage drinking.
To clarify your point. The privatization in Europe has nothing to do with the lower prices, it's the lower tax rate.
In places like Ontario we "double dip" on revenue where the LCBO marks up alcohol as any retailer would and makes revenue for Ontario, but at the same time, alcohol tax is also collected.
When people talk about privatization of the LCBO, it's a portion of that retail markup revenue which we would be unnecessary giving away.
Yeah, I don't see why tax collection would increase.
The article mentions more selection, which is unambiguously good, and more locations which is good from a buyers perspective (although less so from a public health perspective). To be fair, it also mentions a lot of the jobs being minimum wage, but that seems like it has less to do with liquor and more to do with trends in the whole economy.
I don't know, it just doesn't seem like something the private sector couldn't do for any reason, so I'm unsurprised the sky didn't fall, and the situation even improved in some respects.
Absolutely more choice, because I was there for the ALCB days and it was pathetic. As soon as privatization came about, there was a massive increase in available choices.
As for prices, most booze I've bought out of province are more expensive that at home.
I calls them as I sees them. Downvote away.
BC Liquor stores have a pretty wide selection for about the same price. I don't see the correlation with privatization. Maybe they should've just worked with what they had.
It was pretty terrible back then. It was the same in BC though, as I spent a fair bit of time there too. A few years into AB privatization, there was a huge discrepancy between the two provinces. BC caught up but they also moved somewhat to a privatized model, so I guess maybe that could be taken into account.
But you would never find a "craft" beer in the ALCB, even though there were small brewers making good stuff. But they had no real way to sell it. There was a specific store in Edmonton where there were a few non-mass market beers available, but it was really spotty for supply.
For a while there, you could buy hard liquors in BC for a better price than AB, things like Drambuie, but I think they eventually lowered the backroom price on spirits and that brought it more in line.
I think a blended model is a good solution. In Ontario, LCBO's selection has gone downhill over the last 10 years. They've gotten complacent because they haven't had to worry about competition. They've still got a huge amount of purchasing power because of the sheer volume, though, so they should be able to anchor prices against excessive profit gouging.
It'll be harder for corner stores and boutiques to compete on price, but they're also much more able to specialize and serve niche markets.
This is basically the same system Quebec has had for years, and it always seemed to work well there.
This article shares the per-capita government alcohol revenue in Alberta vs Ontario showing Alberta coming out on top.
Does that feel like a strange stat to anyone else? The revenue would be based off total alcohol sales in dollar amount rather than volume of alcohol sold, I know it would hard to correct for that.
When I looked into this before (and that was hard to do because good Alberta data seemed hard to find, I don't have that data handy unfortunately) it seemed like Alberta cirizens spent like 5-15% more per capita annually on alcohol, knowing that negates the value of a per capita revenue number since on it's own it can't correct for the extra spent per person.
I would almost want a "government revenue" per "wholesale/retail value" or maybe multiple numbers where it's "government revenue" per "liter of liquor/beer/wine/etc" and then compare those in both markets.
Because that's truely what we want to measure right? We want government revenue to be high, while also not significantly increasing volume sold.
I'm not sure how it works in other provinces but in Alberta all retailers pay the same wholesale price. I think it helps the smaller stores compete a bit with the bigger chains.