LIQUOR IN ONTARIO.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 30 December 1927, Page 9

LIQUOR IN ONTARIO.

NEW SYSTEM OF PERMITS. SURPRISINGLY SMALL DEMAND. TORONTO, Nov. 20. Permits to buy liquor in Ontario expired on November I, after only five months’ enjoyment. Hereafter a twodollar payment will purchase a 12 months’ privilege. The demand for new permit® since the first of the month has been amazingly small. Whether permit holders stocked, up in the first five months or whether the desire for liquor is declining is a matter for conjecture. But in tho first three days of the month only 15,000 of the province’s 3,000,000 people found it expedient to take out permits and make purchases. The regulations of the Liquor Control Board are being continued for another year practically without change. This may he taken as evidence that the board and the Government believe the Act which restored! liquor as a beverage under Government sale is working satisfactorily. No further limitation has been placed on the quantity of liquor that may be purchased at one time, although there has been some agitation in that regard; nor as to the number of purchases. The form provided the permit holder has spaces for 40 purchases, and when one form is used! up he can get another form without extra charge. The Control Board, however, may cut off any permit holder at any time with or without cause. There are widely divergent estimates as to the quantity of liquor sold in the first five months of operation of the Act. One estimate places the figures at £2,400,00. But- this is denied by the chairman of the Control Board, who, however, declines io make public any figures previous to his annual report to the Legislature. It is accepted that the net revenue from liquor sale is going to give the Provincial Treasury its first surplus in eight years. But whether this is a real eponomi" advantage to the province is. of course, a matter of controversy. It may perhaps he fairly said that complaints about abuses- arising from the resumed sale of liquor are much fewer than anticipated. Prohibition forces, -while not acquiescent, are. with the exception of an occasional protest, almost inarticulate.