Beer Canada has once again employed Bob and Doug McKenzie, Canada’s most famous fictional hosers, to tell Canadians about all the bad things the federal government is doing to their beer. A new set of radio and web-only ads have been produced, proclaiming “2000 and two-four” as the beer year and decrying the proposed “nearly 5%” beer tax increase.

They did a similar campaign last year – I wrote about it here. This year, as last, the campaign relies on questionable math, some cynically crafted language and the hopes their dire warnings will anger enough Canadians to put pressure on the federal government. This year, as last, I find the campaign to be intellectually dishonest and manipulative. At least this year the production quality of the ads is better (last year Bob and Doug sounded like they were in a phone booth).

Here is the core of the story: in 2017 the federal government announced a new policy that automatically increases the alcohol excise duties by the rate of inflation. Last year they announced a one-time cap on the escalator at 2%, but it is once again scheduled to increase by the rate of inflation on April 1. As of earlier this week Statistics Canada is predicting inflation for 2023 to be 3.9%. To my knowledge the government has not yet announced what the escalator will be this year. That usually comes at the budget.

Beer Canada, the beer industry’s lobby organization largely controlled by the big three multinational breweries, has long raged against the automatic escalator, but has upped its efforts in the last year or two as inflation has soared. Hence pulling out the big guns of Bob and Doug McKenzie.

In last year’s post I went through the faulty math in detail (with a big assist from Jordan St. John), so won’t repeat myself here and will point you to that article. The TL;DR is this: they exaggerate the portion of beer prices that go to taxes; conflate federal, provincial and sales taxes; and word the ad carefully to lead consumers into thinking the increase is bigger than it is. Oh, and they neglect to mention that large breweries are more affected by the increase than small breweries (for whom it is mostly a rounding error).

Their math is no better this year. They claim in their adds the increase to the so-called “beer tax” (which doesn’t exist) will be “nearly 5%”, presumably using an estimation released by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) in the fall predicting a jump of 4.7%. Interesting that in all the media coverage of that figure to date, no one has stopped to ask how accurate it is. As I mentioned, StatsCan’s current prediction is 3.9%.

The math on a 4% (I am going with the StatsCan number until I hear from the government otherwise) increase is minuscule. At the full rate (paid only breweries larger than 75,000 HL), the excise will add 11.6 cents to the price of a 24-pack or 0.7 cents per pint. For a 10,000 HL brewery (my comparator from last year), it adds 4.6 cents to a 24-pack or 0.28 cents per pint. Hardly the stuff of anger.

“But inflation!!” I hear the lobbyists saying. That is precisely the problem. The campaign is trying to include beer into the basket of things whose prices Canadians are truly concerned about. “With consumers and restaurants already struggling with higher prices for everything this is the worst time to impose the largest beer tax increase in 40 years”, Beer Canada President C.J. Helie is quoted in one of the ads. He calls the increase “unfair”. (Notice the gratuitous “40 years” to heighten the insult?)

Let’s pause and think about what this message is really saying. It is arguing that because the price of groceries, housing, and other essentials has jumped dramatically in the past two years, it is “unfair” to tax beer a little bit more. Really? I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that the price of beer is not one of most Canadians’ biggest priorities right now.

Equating a few extra pennies on a case of beer to the cost of bread jumping 5% in the last year is infuriating. It demeans the real issues facing Canadians, and tossing in a couple lame Bob and Doug jokes doesn’t make it any less insulting.

While last year I got angry at their ad campaign for its intellectual dishonesty, this year I find myself indignant at its amoral self-interest. It is reprehensible to me that at a time where we need real solutions for crises in health care, housing, cost of living, not to mention the climate crisis, the beer industry is appealing to Canadians’ most selfish instincts and asking them to get mad over a small adjustment to the price of beer, which is ultimately a discretionary item for entertainment.

Frankly, if the government uses the extra $100 million the CTF is predicting it will reap to lower the cost of groceries or shorten ER waiting times, I say tax my beer please!

To borrow a phrase from Bob and Doug, when it comes to Beer Canada’s self-serving, disingenuous campaign, I say: take off, eh!