The owner of a Sarnia pub says Canada’s incoming alcohol tax hike is a kick in the teeth.
On April 1, a 6.3 per cent tax on beer, wine and spirits will come into effect.
John Mallon of Ups N' Downs said due to inflation, labour cost increases and the heavy debt load he's carrying coming out of the pandemic, he's hanging on by his fingernails.
"[The tax hike] is unreasonable. I've already adjusted, in the last year, my alcohol prices twice to accommodate inflation and other costs," he said. "We'll just make adjustments and we'll survive. Adjustments come at the cost of people's jobs and other cutbacks that ripple through the economy."
Mallon said during the pandemic, he thought the federal government came to their senses when it came to supporting the hospitality sector.
"In so much as they saw us as a cash-cow that was on the ropes and was going down and they reached out and gave us some financial assistance so we could survive the pandemic, only to kick us in the teeth coming out of it with another tax hike," he said. "We hit the water and we got a life preserver and we got into a lifeboat and now the lifeboat is going to get hit by another iceberg. It just goes on and on and on."
Mallon said the new normal doesn't resemble the old normal at all.
"I realized we've lost quite a bit of our customer base because they adjusted their lifestyles. So, we're just trying to get a pulse of the new normal and adjust our business model accordingly so that we can eke out what is usually the norm profit in our industry which is about 3.5 per cent of sales."
Mallon said by the time the hike gets down to the man on the street, it's going to be a fairly minimal adjustment if it's adjusted at all. He said if he were to raise his prices a smidgen, customers would get over it in a week.
With files from Natalia Vega