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KUGAARUK/PELLY BAY
Kugaaruk residents will decide on Feb. 25 whether to allow alcohol into their community.

If 60 per cent of voters cast a ballot in favour of change in next month's plebiscite, Kugaaruk would become a wet community. Kugaaruk is currently one of six dry communities in the territory. If the plebiscite passes, it will join four other communities without legal restrictions on alcohol.

Greg Holitzki, the hamlet's senior administrative officer, said a liquor licence can still have a limit on how many bottles of beer or liquor a person can order.

"If you open up a community, and have it a wet community, they (residents) still have to make a liquor order. You can limit, as a mayor and council, the size of a person's liquor order," he said. "That is probably the best way to control alcohol in your community, without having controls given to a group of people.

"It's a lot easier if you just limit how much comes into the community and just make it open than it is to go through the steps of a committee having to approve it first," he said.

Holitzki, who has lived in dry, controlled and wet communities, said it will be interesting to see whether the plebiscite passes. He could not predict whether or not it would be approved.

"There is a big contingent of people that want alcohol and there is a big contingent of people that don't want it," he said. "I think it's going to be close."

The community submitted a 27-signature petition to Finance Minister Keith Peterson to request the plebiscite.

The advance poll is Feb. 18.

Elections Nunavut is running the plebiscite and the results are expected on Feb. 25 or the next day.

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