The LCBO store at 272 Queen St. West, is photographed on Jan 11, 2023.Fred Lum/the Globe and Mail
Ontario’s liquor monopoly says it will comply with a request from Premier Doug Ford and once again offer customers free paper bags, after having phased them out for environmental reasons.
The Premier wrote a short letter to George Soleas, president and CEO of the provincially-owned Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), asking that he take “immediate steps to reverse the decision to remove paper bags from the LCBO’s retail locations.”
In his letter, dated Sunday, Mr. Ford said the decision to charge customers for resusable bags is wrong when “Ontario families are already struggling to make ends meet.”
The Premier also says the LCBO’s bag policy had left “people stuck openly carrying alcohol in public when leaving a LCBO store.” And Mr. Ford argues the “environmental merits of this decision are questionable at best,” as paper bags are easily recyclable.
In an e-mailed statement on Monday, the LCBO said it had “received direction from the provincial government to take steps to reintroduce single-use paper bags at LCBO retail locations.” It said it could not say when the bags would return but would “share more details with our valued customers in the coming weeks.”
The LCBO had completed a phase-out of paper bags last September. It encouraged customers to bring their own resusable bags, or buy ones made from recycled plastic from the LCBO at up to $2.95 each. Cardboard boxes and carriers were still available free of charge.
The government-owned booze retailer said at the time that the switch from paper bags would divert 2,665 tonnes of waste from the province’s landfills, saying that it handed out 135 million “single-use” paper bags a year and that the change would say the equivalent of more than 188,000 trees annually. The LCBO stopped handing out single-use plastic bags more than 15 years ago.
NDP Opposition Leader Marit Stiles said the Premier’s intervention in the paper bag issue shows he has the wrong priorities, telling reporters that Mr. Ford should instead be focused on the problems in the province’s health care system, where more than two million Ontarians cannot find a family doctor.
“I don’t know where he’s decided that’s the big priority. I think he should be spending his time thinking about things like this, where people, 2.3 million Ontarians are without a family physician right now,” Ms. Stiles told reporters.
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2024-04-08 16:24:28Z
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