Ontario lacks health-care plan for alcohol harms as sales expand: health coalition

Premier Doug Ford’s government has no strategy to mitigate problems that could result from the province’s newly liberalized alcohol sales rules, a health coalition said Thursday, warning that more death, cancer diagnoses and emergency department strains are on the horizon.

The coalition, which includes the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Canadian Public Health Association, the Canadian Cancer Society and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, said the province has not responded to its request to work together to come up with a plan addressing the possible harms.

“Somebody should be paying attention to what we firmly believe is on the horizon,” said Camille Quenneville, CEO of the Ontario branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

“And there doesn’t appear to be any thought or interest in having a conversation or sitting down and figuring out how we might be able to deal with this.”

Thursday marks the province’s final stage of opening up the alcohol sales market as grocery stores that are not already selling booze – including Costco – can stock their shelves with beer, wine and coolers.

Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy said the government has met with the health group to listen to their concerns.

“I have a lot of time and respect for those organizations and we sit down with them frequently, but one of their requests was not to move forward with our modernization and that’s not negotiable,” Bethlenfalvy said Thursday.

“We’re clearly moving forward, that’s what we campaigned on, that’s what people want.”

The province is spending $10 million over five years to support social responsibility and public-health efforts, which Bethlenfalvy said is done “so that we can get the awareness out to drink responsibly.”

He said government officials are more than willing to work with the coalition.

The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario said it has issued new licences to 412 grocery stores across the province in addition to the 450 that are already licensed. It said it has issued licences to 4,707 convenience stores, which have been able to sell booze since early September.

“In a province where we’re already seeing nearly 700 emergency department visits due to alcohol every day, and we have a health system that is under extreme strain, it just doesn’t seem logical that the government is pursuing this massive expansion without the implementation of any kind of alcohol strategy for the province to mitigate some of the harms that we know are going to be associated with this expansion,” said Ian Culbert, executive director of the Canadian Public Health Association.

The coalition says research out of British Columbia, which partially privatized alcohol sales some two decades ago, offers a guide post for what’s coming.

They point to a study that shows for every 10 per cent increase in privately owned stores selling alcohol, there was a 1.5 per cent increase in consumption.

With a 300 per cent increase in Ontario locations selling alcohol, the province could see a 45 per cent increase in booze consumption, the coalition said.

Another B.C. study found that for every 20 per cent increase in privately owned stores selling booze, deaths caused by alcohol increased by 3.25 per cent. The coalition projects the number of deaths caused by alcohol could jump from 6,200 to 9,100 per year in Ontario if trends researched in B.C. hold true.

Another B.C. study showed a 1.26 per cent increase in alcohol-related hospital admissions for every 10 per cent increase in the number of stores selling booze.

“Based on these numbers, Ontario could see up to a 40 per cent increase in alcohol-attributable hospitalizations, from 47,500 per year to 65,500,” the coalition wrote.

That’s in addition to the 700 people visiting Ontario emergency rooms every day due to alcohol, the coalition said.

Ford downplayed health concerns last year when announcing plans to speed up liberalized alcohol sales across the province.

“We need to treat the people of Ontario like adults and that’s what we are doing,” he said. “They have a responsibility to drink responsibly.”

Quenneville took issue with that.

“We’re actually not all adults, it’s really young people who will have access in ways that they haven’t before,” she said.

“That’s our concern and I appreciate that there’s an assumption that adults are responsible, but at the end of the day, alcoholism is a disease and it’s an addiction and it’s not an issue of saying people can make better choices.”

By Liam Casey