Grocery Stores

[Elmira Guy]

The tobacco taxes are indeed quite high in Canada. At least the officially the reason is to discourage smoking.

And it did happen in the context of a governmental anti-tobacco strategy.

Minimum prices: Quebec has minimum and maximum prices for milk, and until 1993, for bread. (Bread price-fixing, courtesy the government). I guess it's less common to see minimum prices in Ontario.

But tobacco is about the same price it was 25 or so years ago. I don't know if you're old enough to remember (no offense intended), but tobacco prices were brought back down quite severely after black market tobacco really boomed. So much so that the mayor of one of the eastern Ontario border towns (I cannot remember which town) went into hiding for several days due to criminal groups fighting over smuggling tobacco back into Canada.
I ran a variety store at the time, and cigarettes went down over $3/pack, and the price for a pack today is perhaps only 10-15% more than they were in the early 90's.

I'm not saying the LCBO pricing strategy doesn't include a goal of combating alcohol abuse. I'm simply saying I haven't seen anything that convinces me that this is the case.