Each week, we will post five questions the news media might ask of the wine-and-beer-convenience players, for example: The Beer Store; Premier Dalton McGuinty; Finance Minister Dwight Duncan; Consumer Services Minister John Gerretsen; Tourism Minister Michael Chan; and Opposition leaders Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath. There will be questions for stakeholders as well, for example: the Ontario Craft Brewers; Niagara Wine Council; and independent Ontario wineries.

1. Image via Wikipedia
WINE AND BEER CONVIENCE CAMPAIGN
Introduction to News Media
Introduction – Social Media, Wine and Beer Convenience, Ontario Election 2011
The Wine and Beer Convenience Campaign is a social media drive to make wine and beer available to
responsible adults at Ontario convenience stores.
Our campaign has already gained substantial first-page placement on search engines. Before reading
further we invite you to Google this:
lcbo wine and beer
Our aim is to make wine and beer at the corner store a virally-propelled key issue in the October 2011
Ontario election.
News value in following and covering the Wine and Beer Convenience Campaign
The Election Story: The majority of Ontarians wants it and has for years. A 2010 Angus Reid poll
shows 63 percent of Ontarians want to buy wine and beer at convenience stores. The Ontario
government is responsible for the provincial liquor laws and they are heading to an election in the fall.
Social Media and the Ontario Election: The recent federal election demonstrated the national parties
are not equipped to use one of the most powerful opinion-shaping tools in the political arsenal – social
media. Their provincial counterparts have an even looser grasp of the instrument leveraged to such
great advantage by, for example, President Barack Obama.
In fact, the online public has a much more commanding understanding of how to wield social media as
an instrument for democratic discourse and as a means to shape political outcomes. Specifically, in the
lead-up to the election, our growing social media community will be asking for changes to provincial
liquor laws – legislation that does not reflect a changing society, competitive business principles, the
rights of taxpayers or the will of voters.
Simply put, the candidates will not get to decide if this is on the table for debate during the election

2. campaign; the public will.
Next Steps
We invite you to follow our progress as the Wine and Beer Convenience Campaign gains further
traction on search engine first pages and in the minds of the Ontario public.
As well, we have attached here for your interest five news media questions for the LCBO. These are
questions we think Ontarians would like the news media to pose to the Crown agency. We will be
posting our answers next week.
Each week, we will post five questions the news media might ask of the wine-and-beer-convenience
players, for example: The Beer Store; Premier Dalton McGuinty; Finance Minister Dwight Duncan;
Consumer Services Minister John Gerretsen; Tourism Minister Michael Chan; and Opposition leaders
Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath. There will be questions for stakeholders as well, for example: the
Ontario Craft Brewers; Niagara Wine Council; and independent Ontario wineries.