EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
You can’t go there and purchase Smirnoff or any other hard alcohol. It’s only beer and wine and it’s low alcohol content and affordable.
Again, as I said, Mr. Okalik is concerned and he says there are bootleggers in the dry communities. That’s exactly what the beer and wine store is intended to do, to disrupt the bootleggers and to decrease the binge drinking.
Now, we’re only opening a beer and wine store in Iqaluit. We’re not opening it in a dry community or any other community in Nunavut. If it’s prohibited in a local community and they know who the bootleggers are, they should be reporting the bootleggers.
Go to the police. Make those calls. Don’t support the bootleggers.
I don’t know what Mr. Okalik wants me to do.
I met one time when I was the Minister of Justice, I went to a meeting and they wanted me to have the police inspect suitcases at the airport for people going into dry communities, residents of those communities going into their own communities, stopping them and inspecting their suitcases for hard stuff.
I said, “If you know who they are, why don’t you report them to the police? They are breaking the law.” That’s what has to happen.
People have to stand up to bootleggers.
Bootleggers are supplying hard stuff.
Most bootleggers are probably not selling beer because there’s no value in beer, but you can easily get a case of Smirnoff and you could probably get that in through suitcases or two or three bottles.
You’re not going to bring in a case or a flat of beer to a community. I would be very surprised if a bootlegger... . Bootleggers are kind of like businesspeople too.
They can calculate the mark-ups. They’re not bring in a case of beer or a flat of beer into a prohibited community to sell when they can bring in six bottles of 60 ouncers to sell for $300 to $500 a bottle.
The proposed store will be open for a certain number of hours a day.
Once people run out of what they purchased, they will turn somewhere else.
How will they be stopped if they look somewhere else?
This will just add onto what they bought already.
I can imagine, once the store opens and I purchase my limit, I go to the bar when it opens, and then once I’m done there, I start drinking what I purchased.
That’s a large amount of alcohol.
That’s what you do when you’re an alcoholic.
Once it runs out, you start looking somewhere else, if you can find it.
It seems to be just playing with words because bootlegging won’t be stopped.
I don’t believe that will happen, having gone through it.
This is just a general comment. My concerns are not being addressed, so I’ll stop there for now.
Even though that was just a comment, Minister Peterson, I’ll give you an opportunity to talk about that if you wish.
I pointed out the other day in my Reply to Budget Address that there are several lawful ways for individuals to get their alcohol in Iqaluit. Of course you can get your import permits and ship it in through orders through the south. You can bring them on sealift.
There are multiple outlets in the community, restaurants and bars. There are a couple other places.
You can get special occasion licences for weddings and things like that. You could make homemade beer. You can get a permit to make wine.
There’s a brewery opening in the community some time in the near future. People understand this. There are already outlets where you can get alcohol.
I’ll keep stressing this that the beer and wine store is solely intended to offer low alcohol content, affordable beer and wine. We’re primarily targeting to disrupt the bootleggers, the very bootleggers that Mr. Okalik has mentioned a couple of times that he’s concerned about. If people are really desperate for alcohol, they will find the bootleggers.
There’s nothing we can do to stop them from doing that, but they’re going to paying a lot of money, like I said, upwards of $500 a bottle and we know that’s happening in many communities.
One of the other things we’re working on as the government, putting on my other portfolio, the justice department is working on the Unlawful Property Forfeiture Act where we can look at going after the proceeds of crime. That would be bootlegging. We know some bootleggers are making $10,000 on a weekend.
I was at a police scrum six or seven years ago where there was $200,000 worth of Smirnoff piled up just from one bust in this town; tens of thousands of dollars of cash lying out there. It was quite astounding. It was mostly Smirnoff.
Under that Act, we can target people that could be bootleggers or drug dealers for that matter.
Before I go on to another name, Minister Peterson, I asked you along the same lines, so I’ll ask for a clarification on part of Mr. Okalik’s question, (interpretation ends) if I may. (interpretation) Any adult can get a customer account.
Minister Peterson, once I enter your beer and wine store, I would show my photo ID. As a resident of Pond Inlet, is that it and then I can make my purchase for that day?
I thank myself.
The regulations say any adult. You have to fill in an application and supply ID, but it says may apply. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be approved, but we’re still working out the criteria.
Like I said in question period, we would still go through that process to determine who will be ineligible to be approved and then look at the background of that individual.
It’s still early and it’s good to have this discussion because it helps us with our decision-making processes.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you for clarifying that. This is something to consider. It doesn’t necessarily mean you will be approved; you may be approved, as you stated.
It could happen or might not happen.
I understand right away that if a person is from a prohibited community, they will not be able to get permits even if they’re adults.
Will the residents of prohibited communities never be issued permits?
No, I didn’t say that.
If an individual from a dry community was, let’s say, to go to Ottawa or go to Winnipeg or Yellowknife, that doesn’t stop them from going into a bar and having a drink.
It’s the same if they were to come to Iqaluit. Let’s say I come from Cambridge Bay and I apply and I meet the criteria, why wouldn’t I be approved for a customer account?
You must have a customer account before you can actually purchase any beer or wine and that allows us to keep the data and track the amount of beer and wine that an individual purchases.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you. My understanding is that if I come from a prohibited community, according to government legislation and the wishes of the community, do I understand that if I go to your beer and wine store, I would be able to get a customer account while I’m here in Iqaluit?
Maybe I’m not understanding. If you’re coming from a prohibited community and you go to the beer and wine store to purchase a case of beer and your two bottles of wine, even if you’re intending to go back to Pond Inlet and it’s a prohibited community, then you’re in violation of the local restrictions.
If you’re going to consume the beer or wine here, then you wouldn’t be in violation of the local community rules.
I’ll go on to somebody else. You should also consider this. Being from Pond Inlet, if I’m going to bring any kind of alcohol, I have to be approved.
Well, that’s the law. However, you’re saying that while I’m in Iqaluit, I’ll be able to purchase because you have no idea if I’m going to bring it home to Pond Inlet or if I’m going to consume it here. You should think about that.
Mr. Chown, I celebrate the day with you. Have a good day.
I have a question on what’s being discussed on the beer and wine store.
Some communities are prohibited from possession of alcohol or if someone has broken the law before and was convicted for alcohol-related offences, they are interdicted or prohibited from ordering, let’s say, for six months or one year. The alcohol education committee decides that.
However, if the person leaves the community and goes to the Iqaluit Beer and Wine Store to purchase, my question is on that.
The Department of Finance will be coming up with the process. The person has rights in Canada. If you’re going to check into their background and there are privacy concerns, what are your plans on that?
I’m glad he mentioned the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
If you’re living in a restricted community or a prohibited community, even if I’m a visitor, it’s up to me to know the local laws and obey the local laws. You don’t drink in that community. If an individual comes from that community, like many do, they come to Iqaluit, they go to Yellowknife, and they go to all kinds of places where there are bars or restaurants and they have that right to buy a beer or have a glass of wine.
They can even go to a friend’s house.
Just because they’re from a prohibited community doesn’t mean they can’t have a drink in another community that’s not prohibited.
I’m not understanding that.
We will be considering all these kinds of comments. The application process hasn’t been completed.
We will be consulting with the alcohol education committees and others. The Nunavut Liquor Licensing Board, for example, would be involved in helping us develop our application process.
The RCMP may be involved.
Maybe I’ll rephrase my question here.
An individual who has committed crime while under the influence of alcohol, let’s say, in a restricted community or a prohibited community or no, better yet, in a restricted community, he is on an interdict list for a period of six months to a year maybe.
That individual travels outside of that community and knows now that there is a beer and wine store in Iqaluit, and decides to go buy a case of beer or something.
In order for the beer and wine store to check if this individual is on an interdict list, I believe that would now fall into the part of information and privacy legislation.
Is that going to be taken into consideration to get legal consent of obtaining private, confidential information?
I thank Mr. Mikkungwak for the question, a very good question.
I’m glad you raised that.
Of course we’re well aware of the Access to Information and the Protection of Privacy Act.
We would very likely go talk to the privacy commissioner’s office, “This is what we’re planning to do.”
We do that all the time as a government. We consult with that office. We also have our Department of Justice that can provide legal advice on those types of issues.
That’s the kind of stuff we would do as a matter of course.
In looking at your business plan on page 24, priorities 2017-2020, third bullet, your business plan indicates that one of the priorities for the department’s Corporate Management Branch during the 2017-18 fiscal year is to review and revise the Government of Nunavut’s Staff Housing Policy in collaboration with the Nunavut Housing Corporation.
The NHC’s business plan indicates that it will issue a request for proposals to “conduct an external review of the current GN Staff Housing Policy.”
From the perspective of the Department of Finance, what are the most immediate changes that need to be made to the current Staff Housing Policy?
Well, one of our priorities would be to encourage people to private homeownership and move into their own homes. It would obviously free up staff housing if they were to move into their own housing.
Is the government considering eliminating staff housing subsidies for high-income employees in the senior management and executive categories?
That is not something we are actively considering at this time.
How is the government planning to address the issue of long-standing vacant units as part of its review of the Staff Housing Policy?
The Nunavut Housing Corporation is the lead on this and we are involved to the extent that we give them advice and support. There are staff allocation committees.
Job competitions come to us and for job eval. and competitions, we have to make sure that competitions don’t go out until there’s housing assigned to it.
The housing corporation itself is overall responsible for staff housing, public housing, and social housing.
When we look at staff housing for GN staff that’s part of a benefit package, does that still apply to all GN staff, whether in senior management, middle management, or frontline?
There’s a limited amount of housing in GN staff housing in Nunavut. The last I checked several months ago, there was a shortage of 900 staff houses across Nunavut.
We use the housing to attract people to apply on jobs.
In many communities there’s no local housing market. Practically for all intents and purposes, there’s zero housing. If you didn’t have staff housing, it’s very unlikely you would be able to hire teachers, social workers, nurses, and doctors.
You have to provide staff housing.
We prioritize housing based on the importance of a job to a community and to a department. There are a lot of vacant jobs in Nunavut and the Government of Nunavut because there’s no housing to attract those individuals to apply for that job.
Therefore we typically have to rely on casuals for extended periods of time to staff those positions.
When we look this collaboration between the Department of Finance and the Nunavut Housing Corporation regarding the Staff Housing Policy, how long do you anticipate the review to take or will it be complete soon?
The terms of reference, I believe, are under development now and it’s probably going to take the better part of a year before this is all complete.
I guess the minister is right on par here.
He led right into my next question. Do we anticipate the revisions to be complete in the life of this government?
I wasn’t looking at Mr. Mikkungwak’s questions earlier, but the answer to that is it won’t be completed in the life of this government.
It’s nice to know some of my questions can carry on a little bit here.
When we look at the revisions, how long do you anticipate the revisions for the GN Staff Housing Policy to take place? A year or a year and half?
I don’t have a crystal ball here that I can gaze into and see how things will unfold in the future, but the work will get underway and when it’s complete, the new government and the new ministers will have to decide how to proceed with the results of the work.
Just to remind the members, at this time we’re on Finance. Corporate Management.
Page C-4.
If you will allow me to ask about liquor, I have a few more questions to ask.
Minister Peterson, welcome along with your officials.
This subject is one that I wish to comment on.
I am hurt by this initiative, although I am aware of the benefits.
However, Nunavummiut are being tempted by liquor, kind of like being baited.
This also involves irresponsible drinking that directly impacts our children, which will increase and that is unfortunate.
This is personally unacceptable to me and my reasoning is, although I understand that the objective is to lessen the availability of hard liquor, it is the root cause of committing crimes under the influence of alcohol.
I have never drank or smoked in my life and I don’t use any of those substances.
When you don’t use it, it’s okay too.
For that reason I have a concern about this.
Many people who never drank in their lives in Nunavut are not happy to see more alcohol in the community.
That’s what I feel.
If there are real problems being created by the beer and wine store after the three years, will you be reconsidering this?
If you would like to respond to my comment or question, I would be willing to wait for your response.
I thank Mr. Shooyook for the question. I understand what Mr. Shooyook is saying.
I have to keep clarifying that this is beer and wine. This is not hard alcohol. This is not something where you open up a 60 ounce bottle and binge drink and six or seven drinks, and then black out or violence ensues.
If I could go back in history in myself a little bit in Cambridge Bay, I have been around there a long time and grew up there. One time we had what we call a beer line where the government provided beer in a warehouse.
We had to get cards and we could go down every Friday and get our one case of beer. There was still hard alcohol in town.
You could get it from the curling rink at the time, the DEW line sites, and you could import it. When the beer line closed in 1988 and people started ordering hard stuff from outside of Cambridge Bay or when the bootleggers started supplying the hard stuff, then we really started having problems.
Beer and wine is low content alcohol.
It’s affordable. That’s what we’re planning to do. We’re hoping to, as I said, roll out our social responsibility program and educate people about the dangers of binge drinking, drinking while you’re pregnant, the violence that occurs if you binge drink, so that if people travel around the country or around Nunavut and they’re in situations or in places where they can drink, they will drink responsibly.
As I said, this is a three-year pilot project and we’re going to track through the customer accounts and other information and data we will gather.
We will track the impact of the beer and wine store in the community here.
As I said, based on research that the Nunavut Liquor Task Force did in their 27 months, they looked at Greenland and they saw the Greenland experience was very positive where they opened up beer and wine stores and people learned to drink responsibly and crime didn’t increase. In Northern Quebec a couple of years ago, we got that researched.
They opened up beer and wine stores and there was no notable increase in crime and violence.
At the end of three years we will evaluate it and who knows who is going to be here in three years, but officials in the new government at the time will have to sit down and say, “Okay, this was a pilot project,” look at the pros, look at the cons, “Do we keep it open? Do we close it?” Those sort of questions.
To answer Mr. Shooyook’s question, yes, three years after it opens, it would be evaluated.
Even so, that’s what I say.
While that is the case, I think about the possible things we can see in the future. After it has been opened, the communities that didn’t have access to that before will be requesting and ordering it.
Years later the wine and beer stores will be spread around the communities. It won’t fix anything.
Even though beer and wine are not as strong as hard liquor, people can drink to a stupor by themselves if they drink enough of it.
I am very concerned if we’re not going to be making any legislation about this. I know it may help in some way, but if it will be proper in other ways is another thing.
I will express my feelings on the matter. My personal feeling on the matter is that, whether it is hard liquor or weaker alcohol, once your life includes consumption of these substances, it impacts you. I have never heard of any person who started consuming alcohol said to have turned their life around.
No one has ever improved their lives in this manner.
Even at the lower levels of alcohol and with daily limits, one can still drink and get drunk. This will not benefit your life, as I understand it.
With that being the case, I am just expressing my opinion and feelings on the matter, thus my comments.
Now, I ask this question to you. Once the beer and wine store is open in Iqaluit, and I happen to be in town on medical travel or for a meeting and I get the urge to get some wine, would I be able to go buy wine based on the daily limits you imposed? I would purchase a substance that has no nutritional value.
If I took the wine I purchased home with me, then my family to whom I am arriving would have no nutritious food since I am bringing wine. Further, if making merry with the wine and partying, my sobriety as a healthy person would disappear. If I were to black out, it immediately places my children at risk.
Has the transportation of alcohol to outlying communities been considered? With the limits that were mentioned, would I have complete freedom to bring my purchases of wine or beer to my home community? Is this the case?
I was hopeful that he would be more optimistic about the beer and wine store opening in Iqaluit.
As he knows, we all know, and practically everybody knows, hard liquor is already getting into our communities in Nunavut; restricted, prohibited, and open. There is a flourishing bootlegging business.
The estimates are between $10 million and $20 million of bootlegging going on a year in Nunavut. The booze is getting into the towns already.
It doesn’t matter if they’re restricted or prohibited, it’s getting there.
If there is a bootlegger in the town, the only reason the bootleggers can thrive and do business in that community is because people want to drink.
When they come to Iqaluit from a restricted community or prohibited community or wet community, they don’t have to go down to the beer and wine store to drink.
They can go to one of the bars or local establishments. There are many places where you can get beer, wine, or hard stuff.
Of course in Iqaluit there are also the bootleggers that are here.
They’re more than willing to sell you a bottle for $300 or $400 per bottle. Of course when they do that, the money that you had to buy food is gone to the bootlegger.
You could go to the beer and wine store. You have to apply for a customer account, supply the ID, and meet the criteria to determine… .
I don’t know what it will be yet, but you have to be approved for a customer account and then that customer account only permits you to buy one case of beer per day and two bottles of wine at an affordable cost and low alcohol content.
You could take that back to your hotel room or go visit your friends. That’s your right as a citizen of Canada.
There are no restrictions in Iqaluit that I know of that prevent people from expressing their right to choose to drink. It doesn’t matter if they come from a restricted community or a prohibited community.
However, if they’re from a prohibited community and they’re trying to bring their one case of beer and two bottles of wine back to that community, then they’re breaking the law.
If they’re from a restricted community and if they hadn’t applied to the alcohol education committee for a permit to bring in a certain amount of alcohol, then again they’re breaking the law. They would have to either have a permit to bring it into a restricted community or they can’t bring any beer and wine at all into a prohibited community.
The intention of this beer and wine store, again, I keep reminding everybody, it’s to disrupt the bootleggers who are out there and reduce the binge drinking so that you’re not sitting there getting a 60 ounce bottle at $500 a bottle and then drinking it in five minutes. We know that goes on and that leads to a lot of violence and unhealthy lifestyles.
Mr. Shooyook (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also thank the minister for somewhat alleviating my concern on this matter and I better understand the gist behind the initiative. My concerns are lessened, although I still have concerns.
With that intention as voiced and with the objective to do a pilot project and consequent results of having the beer and wine readily available, binge drinking would be lowered and that is the foundation for pursuing this pilot project.
Although I personally don’t approve of this project, I understand the reasoning for your pilot project and future decisions will be made based on the findings of the pilot project and that it will not run permanently.
I can only offer my thanks for clarifying that. Mr. Chairman, I thank you and that is all for me.
I believe that was just a comment, not a question. Even though there was no question, Minister Peterson, I’ll give you an opportunity to address that last comment if you wish to do so.
I thank Mr. Shooyook for his concerns. I know he has been around for a long time and he has seen the ravages of hard alcohol on Nunavummiut. I think most of us have.
We know friends or family members who have become very ill or even possibly died because of alcohol.
The intention here through this beer and wine store is to give us the opportunity to help Nunavummiut, to provide them with the beer and wine, as I said, that’s affordable, disrupt the bootleggers, and reduce the binge drinking. Also part and parcel with the beer and wine store, and these are recommendations from the Nunavut Liquor Task Force, are the social responsibility programs.