Ontario has about 15 million people, close to 40 percent of Canada’s population, and almost all the alcohol they buy passes through one Crown agency. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario, known as the LCBO, retails and distributes beverage alcohol across the province. That reach has long made it one of the largest buyers of alcohol anywhere in the world.
It answers to the Legislative Assembly through the minister of finance.
How it began
Premier Howard Ferguson’s government set up the LCBO in 1927. Ontario had banned alcohol sales outright in 1916, and the new agency was a compromise between the temperance movement’s call for full prohibition and unregulated sale. Ferguson said the Liquor Control Act existed “to allow people to exercise a God-given freedom under reasonable restrictions.”
The first 18 stores opened on June 1, 1927, with David Blyth Hanna as chief commissioner. By the end of that year the province had 86 stores and three mail-order facilities.
For nearly a century afterward, LCBO shops were the only retail outlets licensed to sell alcohol across most of Ontario. Beer was the main exception, and The Beer Store held a quasi-monopoly there. A scattering of wine shops had by the 2010s merged into two chains, Wine Shop and Wine Rack. Some outlets sat on-site at wineries, breweries and distilleries.
Bars and restaurants are generally required by law to buy through the LCBO, The Beer Store, or directly from Ontario wineries and breweries.
Cracks in the monopoly
In December 2015 the LCBO authorized some supermarkets to sell cider, wine and beer. By December 9, 2016, nearly 130 grocery stores held licences, and 450 were expected by 2020. In September 2017 the LCBO itself still operated 651 liquor stores.
Cannabis followed a short and bumpy path. The LCBO was the parent company of the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation, which was for a time the only entity licensed to sell recreational cannabis in the province. That ended with the Cannabis Statute Law Amendment Act, 2018, after Doug Ford’s new government decided private stores would sell the product instead.
The American angle
In February 2025, Premier Ford ordered the LCBO to pull all American alcohol from sale in response to the second round of Trump tariffs.
