Doug Ford was right on top of it. After only a weekend of Ontario’s liquor-board strike, he had made a video pointing folks to stores where they could still buy beer and wine.
Honestly, many Ontarians will be all for it. There aren’t a whole lot of folks who feel a deep need for the near-monopoly on alcohol retailing that Mr. Ford is weakening. Nobody likes a liquor strike. Who doesn’t want a map that helps you find what you’re looking for?
That leads to a question many have already posed: Does anyone have the link to the map of Ontario family doctors that are accepting new patients? Asking for two million friends.
Of course, it would be a good thing if after six years, Mr. Ford would get on top of the GP shortage. His government controls medical schools and doctors’ salaries and the health care system.
But beer first.
Mr. Ford rushed out a video of him flipping burgers on the barbecue in an apron, lifting a brewski, and telling people all they have to do is zoom in on the map to find the booze supply.
That other stuff, such as seeing a doctor for that thing that hopefully is not an early symptom of horrible illness, is less fundamental.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow famously identified a hierarchy of human needs, starting at the base of a pyramid with basic physiological needs such as food, water and a warm place to sleep, and working up in steps: Safety was next, followed by love and belonging, then self-esteem, and then higher aspirations such as self-actualization.
The idea is that people focus first on satisfying basic needs, starting with physical ones, and once they are taken care of, they move up to more complex emotional or self-fulfilment needs.
He built that model to explain human motivations, but Mr. Ford and his political strategists know hard-working people want a cold one. Mr. Ford has his own hierarchy of needs.
Beer is the base of the pyramid. Mr. Ford ran in 2018 on a buck-a-beer promise and is now promising to expand alcohol sales to corner stores.
After drinkies comes driving. Mr. Ford scrapped the $120 car-registration fee just before the 2022 Ontario election, and then did away with the need to renew registrations and promised more highways to commuters.
Presumably there’s other stuff higher up the pyramid, and Mr. Ford does talk about housing sometimes, though that’s not going so well, and health care must be on one of those rungs, but it gets pretty complicated and hey, look – it’s beer o’clock. Let’s go back to the map.
Sure, it would be great if Mr. Ford’s provincial government could both arrange for beer and wine to be sold in corner stores and ensure adequate primary health care. Just because you want someone to check on that cough doesn’t mean you don’t want to be able to buy beer in your neighbourhood, and after 9 p.m. Or that you want to go without when there’s a strike.
And health care is a big issue. The Ontario College of Family Physicians has said two million people in the province are without a family doctor. Ontario’s per-person spending on health care was the lowest of any province in 2022-23, according to the Financial Accountability Office.
The province has an online portal for finding a doctor, but the online reviews give it zero stars and a lot of four-letter words.
Fixing health care is hard. That’s all the more reason for Mr. Ford to keep talking about beer.
There may be many Ontarians who need a family doctor but have given up on any politician fixing the health care system. But even if they’re unhappy with that, they might want to see beer sold in more corner stores. They might like the Premier who did the thing they want even as he fails at the thing they need.
This is not just a Doug Ford thing in Canadian politics, though his team has become pretty good at it. Who doesn’t want to get a $120 refund from their car registration?
It helps that the beer map is believably on brand for Mr. Ford, and you could imagine it was his idea all along. At the time of an annoying strike, he’s helping folks around it. The strike-busting part of it might not even hurt him.
If it’s not what Ontario residents say they need, at least it’s something they want. Don’t worry about that cough.