The loony beer campaign

Now for what we all wanted: A buck-a-beer, thank you.

Well, the Ontario government is rolling out its most impressive campaign fulfilment yet. During the election, while I was fixating on irrelevant stuff like the environment, employment and the economy, the newly minted Conservative leader was busy making promises about beer. 

When I heard this, I thought it must be yet another fake news story created by Vladimir, some Russian hacker typing away in Moscow, bent on upsetting our noble democracy. But no, it was real. Who needs foreign governments revealing how dumb democracy is when we have our own politicians proving it? Yes, a buck-a-beer—it’s a real thing, people.

Like late-night TV hucksters, the government is helping us get something we didn’t know we needed. Do you remember the ShamWOW and the Clapper? Given that the brewers are baulking at the economics of a buck-a-beer, perhaps the government needs one of those hucksters to try to convince brewers that losing money on beer is a good idea.

I can think of a few other government promises since education, day care, health care and the environment seem to have taken a back seat to beer. How about a nickel bag of pot that actually costs a nickel? Maybe Coke (or Pepsi) in every drinking fountain. And, maybe we want the McRib back. McRib, where are you?

Perhaps the real aim of this frothy campaign is to help folks who can’t handle marijuana. If drugs fail, alcohol picks up the baton. Choose your inebriation; the government needs us in a fog. That way we will forget that they have already broken the promise of saving money while not cutting services. It took them about a month to do to that. It must be some kind of speed record for breaking the promise barrier.

Even Ed the Sock is tweeting about the ridiculousness of cheaper beer. You know things are bad when we can thank a sock for taking the higher moral ground. Between cheap beer and legal marijuana, Ontarians will be chill. I’ll be surprised if any work gets done in this province.

I admit, dear reader, that it’s all lost on me, since I am neither a pot smoker nor a beer drinker. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a yurt-dwelling craft beer elitist. It is simply that I’ve found that a good dill pickle and a corned beef sandwich takes me to where I need to go.

 We all have our vices, I suppose. The best corned beef sandwiches comes from Montreal. I hope Mr. Ford does not put up a roadblock to la belle province—all those trade wars going on. Didn’t Pierre Elliott Trudeau tell us that the state has no business interfering in the refrigerators of the nation, or something like that—so I hope I’m safe? 

In all seriousness, I genuinely respect those who are willing to stand for political office. Contrary to some, I think all parties want to do good. But how is it that the environment and social programs seem so impossible, but the dream of buck-a-beer is within our grasp, despite the brewers saying they are frosty to the idea. I don’t doubt that some enterprising manufacturer will embrace the loony beer campaign. They will announce it like the discovery of cold fusion. Conservatives will be backslapping the premier all the way to the beer halls of Belgium.

But I have to ask: Is buck-a-beer the best we can do as a democracy?