Tonight, for the first time, there will be liquor sales at the Coliseum during the Prince George Spruce Kings home game.
There will not be rioting and looting through downtown after the game. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will not be riding down Dominion, hooting and hollering. Prince George will not be taken over by drunken zombies looking to devour the brains of sober residents.
Prince George city council has done the right thing over the last several years by finally allowing liquor sales during events at CN Centre and now the Coliseum. Yet the fear remains among councillors that the drunken hordes are at the gate.
"It really does open up the door to have it at every corner store and if we don't do something with a bylaw then we really, really lose control of the sale of it," said Coun. Brian Skakun on Monday night. "I'm not opposed to the sale of it, it's just do we want it everywhere or do we want to have some parameters?"
The worry from him and most of his council colleagues is, at best, unwarranted, and, to be more blunt, it's downright patronizing. The logic behind it seems to be that without the intervention of earnest local politicians, alcoholism will run rampant amongst the great unwashed masses. Put another way, it's a "me and my friends can hold our booze but I don't trust the rest of you" mentality.
The fretting also shows an ignorance of how the marketplace works. Increasing the number of locations selling alcohol does not increase alcohol sales. If there were suddenly four daily newspapers in Prince George, the demand for daily newspapers wouldn't go up. If there were four more supermarkets in Prince George, residents wouldn't be buying more groceries. On its own, without the meddling of city council, the market, made up of the same people who vote in elections, will decide the right number of liquor outlets in the city. The role of council should simply be to decide the best areas for liquor sales to happen and to zone those areas accordingly.
Coun. Jillian Merrick has it right.
"Lotto, cigarettes, all those things are broadly available across the community," she said. Liquor - I don't know why it's treated so special."
Instead of seriously considering the letter sent to the city from the Alliance of Beverage Licensees of B.C. about its concerns about a "high density of alcohol retailers in your community posing serious social consequences," mayor and council should have laughed at the ridiculousness of it.
Those licensees have a clear conflict of interest. What they really mean when they say that expanded sales will present "significant concerns for the future of B.C.'s private retailers" is that more competition means they won't make as much money as they do now. As stated above, liquor sales won't increase with more outlets but it will cut into the profit margins of the existing sellers.
Boo hoo. That's business.
It would be as silly as The Citizen firing off a letter to mayor and council demanding them to reject the application for a business licence from someone wanting to start another daily newspaper.
It shouldn't be city council's business to protect the profit margins of local business, just like it shouldn't be city council's business to set artificial limits on the availability of a legal product for moral reasons.
Once the moralizing starts, there's no end to it. Bring on the letters from concerned parents arguing that potato chips and soft drinks shouldn't be sold within a kilometre of local schools. Bring on the letters that only the casino should sell lottery tickets because selling them in grocery stores encourages gambling. Bring on the letters that cigarettes should only be sold in adult-only establishments because they encourage smoking among youth.
Instead of anxiety about something as yesterday's news as liquor sales, city council needs to be looking ahead to tomorrow's issue. The newly-elected prime minister of Canada campaigned on the promise to legalize marijuana. What does that look like in Prince George? Does it mean retail sales? If so, who will be allowed to sell it and where? How will it be taxed? Will special permits be required?
Those are far more pressing questions that need answering than the number of locations in Prince George where an adult can buy a case of beer.
