Recently in the news we have heard about broadcaster and wine guy Terry David Mulligan’s efforts to bring attention to one of our archaic laws. It is illegal to transport wine, beer and liquor across provincial borders and he wants to see that law addressed.
Much of Mulligan’s protest is aimed at making it possible for BC wineries to ship out of province without having to go through government control boards or importers (many simply don’t produce enough to do so). The protest has not been without derision, especially from individuals who regularly buy wine for their own use and transport it from BC to Alberta (or Alberta to BC) and the law is rarely enforced on individuals. But the fact is that the law is on the books and it seems to be in direct contrast to agreements like TILMA (Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement).
In my opinion it’s time to blow up our provincial laws that govern liquor and rewrite them so they actually make sense. Not so long I was talking to a winery owner who described some of the many, many challenges that must be faced, many of them of no apparent benefit to the business or the public. To create even a self-guided tour of a vineyard requires numerous hoops be jumped through—and those tours have nothing whatever to do with the consumption of wine.
It’s not any easier for restaurants either. In Creston, we had the recent case of a new owner waiting for more than four months for a liquor license application to be processed. Among the delays were the moving of a government office and holidays being taken by the inspector (of course neither the office or the inspector are in Creston).
What struck me as being particularly ridiculous in this case was that the new owner had only recently closed a restaurant in Vancouver, where he had a liquor license, and he was opening in a premises that only months earlier had been a licensed restaurant. What possibly could have been so complicated that it took several months to process the application?
This week I spoke with another new restaurant owner, one whose doors have yet to open. Acquiring a liquor license has involved faxing reams of paper to a phone number that no longer exists, due to the move in the licensing office. And, if you can imagine, the application involved providing an inventory of cutlery and dinnerware that the restaurant holds.
Liquor laws are hardly the only archaic, paternalistic laws that are on our books, of course. Think of the foolishness of the law banning the communication of election results during a federal election ballot count. The purported reason for the law is to prevent voters in the West to be swayed by how Eastern voters have cast their ballots. If you think about it for a few minutes, you might begin to wonder why the government should have any business in controlling the reasons for how any of us vote.
More than a decade ago the BC Liberal party was elected after promising to eliminate a third or more of government regulations, largely to make doing business in the province easier. That same government later announced that its mission was accomplished. And yet we continue to see the hospitality industry struggle with mountains of paperwork and laws that are designed to do nothing more assert control, to keep businesses under the thumbs of bureaucrats. It’s an outmoded concept in which governments see themselves as parents of a naïve population and it needs to stop.
Since the Liberal government announced its success at reducing regulation, and its continuing commitment to make it easier for businesses to operate, there has been little attention paid to the need to overhaul our liquor laws. It’s time that we, as consumers and taxpayers, began to pressure those we send to Victoria to represent us. These are our laws, and we deserve to be better served by them.