“A mojito with REAL rum. Ready to drink. Exclusively at the SAQ. »
The billboards were deployed at the Berri-UQAM station recently, where thousands of pairs of eyes cannot miss them. Including those of many minors and subway users struggling with alcohol problems to varying degrees.
It also boasts palomas with REAL tequila. And Caesars with REAL vodka.
Not enough to write to his mother, you will say. It’s true. Liquor ads are ubiquitous these days and you don’t notice them anymore. They are on bus shelters, in flyers, in personalized offers pushed by your Inspire card.
During the Grand Prix, large parts of the interior of Berri station were painted Heineken green.
Such advertising offensives should however raise questions, especially when they come from the Quebec state. And what could be better than a Saint-Jean weekend, when many Quebecers happily raise their elbows to think about it?
The moment is all the more conducive to reflection since the SAQ has a new president. Jacques Farcy arrives from the Quebec Cannabis Society (SQDC), where things are going very differently.
Unlike the SAQ, the SQDC has no commercial mandate. Its objective is to protect the health of consumers. It is not authorized to do any form of advertising.
We are not asking Mr. Farcy to go that far. But if he could migrate a little of the spirit of sobriety that reigns at the SQDC to the SAQ, all of Quebec society would benefit.
In any case, it is imperative to place the well-being of Quebecers at the heart of the SAQ’s decisions. For now, its commercial mandate forces compromises – the Crown corporation speaks of a “balance” – between health and financial performance.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
SAQ branch in Montreal
However, this very idea of financial return is a vast illusion. Because a society does not get rich with alcohol.
Health problems, loss of productivity, costs related to the justice system: each year, in Quebec, the bill for harm caused by alcohol exceeds 3 billion dollars, according to the Canadian Center on Addiction and Substance Use.
It’s more than tobacco. Much more than drugs like cocaine or heroin. It also outweighs the financial benefits generated by the sale of alcohol. Last year, by way of comparison, the SAQ generated $1.4 billion in profit.
To this purely economic vision, we must add the social impacts. Alcohol is implicated in more than half of cases of sexual violence, to name just one example.
In this context, one has to wonder why the Quebec government goes beyond its role of managing the demand for alcohol and encourages its citizens to consume rum and tequila through advertisements.
In 2021-2022, the Crown corporation spent $10 million on marketing. This is certainly less than the 28 million recorded in 2015-2016. But since the Inspire program, SAQ advertising has been better targeted and therefore more effective.
The SAQ defends itself by saying that alcohol consumption is stable in Quebec and that it is not trying to increase it. The state-owned company aims to increase its sales by 2% per year, but in revenue and not in volume.
You might find that reassuring. But nothing in the SAQ’s constituting act sets out these objectives or regulates the marketing done by the state corporation. We remember the “commercial shift” made by the SAQ at the turn of the 2000s, when it was headed by Gaétan Frigon. Nothing would prevent a future government from seeing the SAQ again as a cash cow and from raising its sales targets.
Even the employees of the SAQ encourage its leaders to do more for the protection of the public. While they claim to be aware of the ban on selling to minors and customers in a state of intoxication, they deplore not having the training to discuss the risks of the products they sell with their customers.
Here again, the SQDC could serve as a model.
The union of SAQ employees also denounces the development of “SAQ agencies” in convenience stores, for example, where it is often underage employees who find themselves selling alcohol to customers. It is indeed worrying.
In a society where the use of most drugs is so taboo that their users find themselves stigmatized, it is fascinating to observe how the consumption of alcohol is trivialized.
The SAQ participates in this trivialization. The only way to reverse the trend is to make the health of Quebecers the one and only mission of the SAQ.