Iqaluit voters want beer and wine store
Issue now goes to cabinet; deputy minister suggests
nothing will happen this summer
Casey Lessard
Northern News Services
Monday, April 27, 2015
IQALUIT
The question was simple: Are you in favour of a beer and wine store in Iqaluit?
On April 20, Iqaluit voters indicated they are overwhelmingly in favour of opening a beer and wine store in the capital city. Cabinet ministers will meet soon to decide whether to honour the results of the non-binding plebiscite. - Casey Lessard/NNSL photo |
And the answer was clear, with 77 per cent of voters saying yes on April 20. Forty per cent of eligible Iqalungmiut cast a vote.
Nunavut's cabinet ministers will now meet to decide whether to honour the results of the non-binding plebiscite - which saw 1,126 say yes and 326 say no - or yield to the opposition voices from an October public meeting.
"There was an overwhelming opposition to opening a beer and wine store from mostly the elders but others as well in the community," deputy finance minister Chris D'Arcy said, referring to about two dozen speakers that dominated the meeting.
"I think only three people in that three-hour session spoke in favour of a beer and wine store."
D'Arcy said neither piece of information alone will guide the decision, and cabinet will also consider the results of conversations with special interest groups and an online poll.
He said he will soon be contacting the senior administrative officers of Baffin region hamlets to determine whether their communities want a public meeting to further understand how the decision may affect them.
"It's more of an Iqaluit decision, I should think," D'Arcy said of the prospect of a store, but community meetings would be used "to reassure them that the liquor regime remains the same in their communities and to assist them in understanding what would or could happen if the cabinet went ahead with a beer and wine store."
Cabinet meets every three weeks, so D'Arcy's office will now prepare a brief to provide clarity into the options going forward.
In preparing the plebiscite, Elections Nunavut stated that the store could open this summer. D'Arcy said a summer 2015 opening is off the table.
"There'd be no way for this summer," he said. "It depends on so many things, if it is even going to happen. There are administrative and legal challenges we'd have to wrestle with."
The government is proposing to open a store Monday through Saturday, from noon to 7 p.m. daily.
Only beer and wine - no coolers or distilled alcohol - would be available.
Residents would need to set up a permanent account at the store and present photo ID for each purchase. The proposal suggests a daily maximum of 12 beers and two bottles of wine.
People not from Iqaluit could purchase and consume the daily maximum within Iqaluit, but anyone wishing to transport purchases to other communities would have to abide by the restrictions in place in their destination.
In its 2012 report, the Nunavut Liquor Act Review Task Force cited Greenland's experience of how restricting hard liquor in favour of liberalizing the availability of beer and wine resulted in a reduction in serious crime.
"We still want people to drink responsibly, to drink in moderation, to remember that a drink is a drink is a drink," D'Arcy said.
"If you're drinking a mixed drink, one-and-a-half ounces of alcohol is the same as a glass of wine is the same as a bottle of beer."
