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Nunavut's first legal liqour store since the 1970s opens in Iqaluit

F

FrankCanada97

Roughly the size of a baaaaaarge
iqaluit-beer-and-wine-store.jpg


Iqaluit's beer and wine store opens today
Nunavut Finance Minister Keith Peterson will officially open Iqaluit's long-awaited beer and wine store at noon today in the city's liquor warehouse, which served as a liquor store until it was shut down over 40 years ago.

The opening comes more than two years after Iqaluit residents voted overwhelmingly in favour of the store in a referendum.

The votes came despite strong public opposition by many, including member of the Nunavut Legislature Paul Okalik, who resigned as justice minister over the issue, saying he "could not just sit there and accept" cabinet's decision to open the store while the territory has no alcohol treatment centre.

The three-year pilot project is part of a government-led strategy to reduce the harm of alcohol consumption in the territory by making lower-alcoholic beverages more accessible.

That was one of the recommendations made by a task force struck in 2010 to review the territory's Liquor Act. Its 2012 report, Halting the Harm, also noted a persistent opposition to making any alcohol available in the North, with some people suggesting a territory-wide ban on alcohol.

Others argued such a ban would simply fuel the trade in bootlegged alcohol, another scourge the beer and wine store is meant to disrupt.
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iqaluit-beer-and-wine-store.jpg


A new microbrewery, Nunavut's first, is expected to open in the capital later this year. It will sell beer directly to the Nunavut Liquor Commission and possibly export some outside of Nunavut.

Sales at the new beer and wine store begin at 12:30 p.m.

Customers need to be at least 19 and will have to set up an account in order to use the store. The store will be open Tuesday to Saturday, from noon to 7 p.m.
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Nunavut hopes first legal beer and wine store might curb boozing
IQALUIT, Nunavut -- After almost two decades of debate, the capital of Nunavut is hoping to reduce booze-related social problems by opening the territory's first retail store for beer and wine.

"We need to take steps to help people change their behaviour towards alcohol," said Dan Carlson, Nunavut's assistant deputy finance minister. "We want to help people move away from the too-common habit of binge-drinking hard alcohol."

Since the 1970s, Nunavut has been the only jurisdiction in Canada where you can't nip down to the nearest outlet and pick up a six-pack for the game or a bottle of wine for dinner. All liquor must be ordered from a government warehouse.

Some communities ban alcohol, others allow limited purchases and others have local committees that decide who can order it in.

But booze is still easily available to anyone who wants to pay for a bootlegged bottle, which can fetch hundreds of dollars. RCMP still blame liquor for causing the vast majority of crime --including family and sexual violence -- in communities such as Iqaluit.

A number of reports have suggested that selling low-alcohol beverages might stop drinkers from sitting down with a bottle of the hard stuff.

"We want to make it easier to access the lower-content liquor in the hope that will provide people with an alternative to buying bootlegged liquor out of the back of someone's house at two in the morning," Carlson said.

And the government hopes easier access to beer and wine will cut down on bootlegging itself, he added. The Nunavut Liquor Commission has estimated that half the spirits it sells are resold illegally.
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Consequently, Nunavut's pilot project for liquor retailing will be unique in Canada.

Customers won't be able to browse bottle-stacked shelves. They'll place orders with a clerk, who will then retrieve the wine or beer from an adjacent warehouse.

All customers will be required to set up an account. Purchases will be limited to a dozen beer or two bottles of wine per person per day.

"These daily limits are a government recognition that there are concerns," said Carlson.

The registry will create big-picture information to help the government understand the "flow of alcohol" in the community, he said. It will be shared with police and Nunavut's Health Department.

Individual records will not be examined. "We won't be following individuals that have normal purchase behaviours."
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Projections suggest the outlet will generate about a million dollars in sales in a community of about 8,000.

Debate over purchasing alcohol is almost as old as Nunavut.

Within two years of Nunavut's creation in 1999, a government committee held hearings across the territory. In 2013, another committee visited every community and found views about evenly split on whether there should be easier access.

Plebiscites on alcohol access regularly come up in Nunavut communities. Carlson said Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay have already held plebiscites on beer and wine stores. Both communities were heavily in favour, he said.
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S

Switch Back 9

a lot of my threads involve me fucking up somehow. Perhaps I'm a moron?
I mean, taxing and regulating seems to be the best option when it comes to this kind of thing. Making it illegal is not going to help the alcohol problems that plague these kinds of communities.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I'm Canadian and this is the first time I've heard that alcohol was so restricted up there.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Orin GA said:
That's a liquor store?
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Yeah looks like the DMV lol. It's kind of a glimpse into what a communist liquor dispensary would look like :p

Even in BC we have government liquor stores so they look a little stuffy and boring... but even they've evolved to look more like private stores.

I think the government should get out of liquor in Canada and privatize it all tbh. They have in some provinces already.
 
DJ_Lae

DJ_Lae

Member
Probably a good thing overall, although while it will obviously cut down on illegal alcohol sales I don't know if it will curb the binge drinking issue.

There are similar issues on many of the aboriginal reserves here, and that has many more deep-seated roots than just the legality or availability of liquor.
 
F

FrankCanada97

Roughly the size of a baaaaaarge
BocoDragon said:
Yeah looks like the DMV lol. It's kind of a glimpse into what a communist liquor dispensary would look like :p

Even in BC we have government liquor stores so they look a little stuffy and boring... but even they've evolved to look more like private stores.

I think the government should get out of liquor in Canada and privatize it all tbh. They have in some provinces already.
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It's kind of weird in Ontario, beer companies basically have a monopoly selling beer in cases over 24. Their store is aptly named "The Beer Store". IIRC, the government only sells beer in six packs at their stores. They've only just recently allowed alcohol to be sold in select grocery stores.
 
Z

ZZMitch

Member
Switch Back 9 said:
Predominantly native populations and alcohol have always been a tricky situation in Canada (and Australia). I imagine the cost of shipping shit all the way up there adds to the problem.



And here is the real problem.
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As someone who has spent a lot of time in northern communities there are some unfortunate oddities with food/drink prices. I remember that chips and snacks like that we're relatively cheap but healthier foods like fruit and vegetables we're more expensive. Which means it's harder to people to maintain healthy diets.

This depends on communities though. In Wekweeti (1 hour flight from Yellowknife + winter road) you can get apples for like 2 bucks, so not bad at all. In Kugluktuk (more isolated, esp. in the winter) things are much more expensive, esp. stuff that can go bad.
 
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