Liquor board reviews controversial distillery scholarship

Spirits Canada pays the Ontario Hostelry Institute, with experience in scholarship programs, to administer the award.

Applicants must prepare a 1,000-word essay on responsible drinking, and a panel of judges picks a winner without knowing the identities. The panel includes an LCBO employee, which for the last two years has been Elizabeth Kruzel-D’Cunha, senior policy analyst at the agency.

Westcott said the winner is also offered a summer job in Toronto with the Student Life Education Co., a charity that promotes responsible consumption of alcohol among students.

An ethics consultant says the scholarship is a “significant” sum and raises serious issues that the LCBO’s board of directors – rather than the president and his staff – must resolve.

Having president and CEO Bob Peter investigate “would lack credibility” because his daughter benefited from the program in 2004, said Jane Garthson.

She also said the scholarship raises the possibility that LCBO employees might favour certain suppliers when they are purchasing stock for the stores.

“The perception is too strong that the supplier choice would be influenced down the road,” Garthson said from Toronto.

Garthson advises charities and associations on governance and ethics, and helped write the conflict-of-interest guidelines at the Ontario Racing Commission.

One of the judges for the Spirit of Education scholarship is Rowland Dunning, who has registered in Ontario as a lobbyist for the Association of Canadian Distillers. The registration says he lobbies the LCBO, and cites the Spirit of Education scholarship as one of his lobbying activities.

But both Dunning and Westcott said he is not a lobbyist for the distillers’ group. Dunning said he is paid by Spirits Canada only for sitting on the award selection committee – not for lobbying – but “was advised by the registry to register.”

Late last month, the LCBO reached a four-year deal with its union, averting a strike. The union bargaining team is recommending acceptance in a ratification vote set for July 13-14.

- The Canadian Press