Councillors are generally in agreement that legislation to enable the sale of alcohol in stores other than government liquor stores and private beer vendors would not be beneficial for Thompson.
The bill, which is currently making its way through the Manitoba legislature, was discussed by council at their March 20 committee of the whole meeting.
A provincial news release says the legislation wold establish a five-year pilot project enabling retail stores to sell booze and bring Manitoba more in line with other Canadian jurisdictions where the sale of liquor in retail stores is permitted, according to Municipal Relations Minister Andrew Smith.
“As this is before the house, I believe that council should have a look at this and the City of Thompson make its feelings felt because I can see a number of impacts on policing services, issues in the retail stores,” said city manager Anthony McInnis. “We've had multiple discussions with the previous [RCMP] inspectors that when liquor is available in the community, the issues that show up at three, four or five in the morning, as the liquor is consumed.”
Mayor Colleen Smook said the city should voice its concerns to the provincial government and also encourage surrounding communities to do the same,
“We also get a lot of complaints that a lot of bootlegging happens out of Thompson,” she said.
Expressing doubts that private retailers would have the same sort of security as Liquor Mart, where customers have to provide identification so the information on it can be scanned and stored temporarily in the computer system to discourage theft, Coun, Brian Lundmark asked if the province would be sending a fleet of social workers to help cope with the fallout of the proposed change as well.
“I just don't see this helping us in any way,” he said. “We need to be spending more time on all the social problems.”
McInnis said in response to a question from Coun, Sandra Oberdorfer that it wasn’t clear if the city would have the ability to regulate the hours of liquor sales or only the hours that stores that sell liquor can be open.
“Is it you can just say the shop can open or closed or can you actually specify products X, Y, Z that can only be sold during these hours?” he said.
Whether councillors like or dislike the idea of alcohol being sold in more locations is less important than finding out what, specifically, the city can do to regulate its sale, said Coun. Duncan Wong.
“We can agree or disagree,” he said. “I think you just need to find out what other restrictions, what can we do? What type of authority we can have.”
