Liquor and the Liberal State

Book excerpt: Cultural pastime, profitable industry, or harmful influence on the nation? Liquor was a tricky issue for municipal, provincial, and federal governments after Confederation. Liquor and the Liberal State traces how the Ontario provincial government’s takeover of liquor regulation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries involved both discrete local politics and expansive constitutional questions. Dan Malleck explores how notions of individual freedom, equality, and property rights were debated, challenged, and modified in response to a vocal prohibitionist movement and equally vocal liquor industry. While the liquor licensing regime helped build a vast patronage base for the governing Liberal Party, some believed it exceeded the constitutional authority of the province. The drink question became as political as it was moral – a key issue in the establishment of judicial definitions of provincial and federal rights and, ultimately, in the crafting of the modern state. This lively and meticulous work demonstrates the challenges governments faced when dealing with the seemingly simple, but tremendously complicated, alcoholic beverage.