OTTAWA – Liquor board workers in Ontario have been ordered to stop accepting freebies from the big distilleries and breweries.
But tough new rules imposed by the Ontario government have ended the gravy train, forcing workers to refuse the hundreds of ticket offers they once accepted. The ban was imposed last August, and the agency issued revised guidelines to its workers in March this year. An internal report estimates that no-charge tickets represented about a third of all the supplier-paid benefits enjoyed by a key group of employees. The rest were mostly business meals, which are still allowed. The report, created in anticipation of the tougher rules, also found that the official forms employees are required to file when they accept freebies are too often vague and incomplete. “There is a significant amount of activity for sporting and entertainment events,” says the document, obtained by The Canadian Press under the province’s freedom-of-information law.
“There was inconsistent documentation of the business reason for the various activities, and inconsistent levels of detail provided with respect to company or individual host names.”