Advocacy Update – October 2016

The CAMRA Vancouver advocacy committee met earlier this week to discuss the launching of a few major campaigns that we would like to see. We threw around a lot of ideas; some more grandiose, some less so. In the end we kept coming back to two major ones: public drinking and the future of breweries in Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam.

First, public drinking. We went into this meeting with every intention of coming out of it with a fully actionable plan that would allow us to revolutionize the stance that the city of Vancouver takes on being able to drink in public areas. But the more we thought about it, we realized that this is not something that can be done quickly, nor is it something that we want to do around winter time. After all, the best places to drink a beer would be beaches, parks and relaxing areas where people can take a load off and relax. In the Vancouver area, the weather doesn’t exactly allow for round the year beach going. However, since the meeting we have begun to reach out to various stakeholders in the community to help us build a proper platform surrounding this issue. We firmly believe that we can have a strong actionable platform that would allow us to make a strong push for this by May 2017. If you feel passionately about public drinking laws and want to make sure your voice or opinion is heard when forming our stance and pushing this campaign, please reach out to me and let me know.

Second on the list, the tri-cities and its future as a beer hub in the pacific northwest. If you ask anyone where the most innovative, exciting and enjoyable beer scenes are in the greater Vancouver area, Port Moody inevitably comes up in their short list; and rightfully so! Parkside, Yellow Dog, Twin Sails and Moody Ales are making fantastic beer and have been embraced by Mayor Mike Clay and the city of Port Moody to create an inclusive, invigorating and vibrant beer community.

But what about the rest of the tri-cities? Up until recently, the future of Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam was looking quite bleak. Despite repeated attempts to see zoning changes that would allow for more breweries to open up, it simply seemed as though things wouldn’t budge. Until recently, that is! You may have heard that in July City of Coquitlam passed bylaw amendments to permit liquor manufacturing in the following zones:

C-2 [General Commercial]
C-4 [City Centre Commercial]
C-5 [Community Commercial]
C-7 [Transit Village Commercial]
CS-1 [Service Commercial]
CS-2 [Limited Commercial]
B-1 [Business Enterprise]  (does not allow outdoor seating)
M-1 [General Industrial] (no mention of outdoor seating either for/against)
M-2 [Industrial Business] (does not allow outdoor seating)
CD-1 [Comprehensive Development Zones] Specific to land use designations A, B, D, E, F as outlined in Pt. 21 of the Coquitlam Zoning Bylaws.

That of course – is “municipal code” for several areas are now able to open breweries. AS far as we understand it, these are limited to breweries and tasting rooms. As of now, it appears lounge licensing wouldn’t be a possibility. (In simple terms, a lounge license allows Breweries to offer different types of product, more volume of alcohol in one sitting.) It is our hope that, with popular demand and community support we can eventually see these new breweries move towards a lounge license down the road.

This is all very exciting news for people in the City of Coquitlam! Time and time again I have spoken to people at various beer events/establishments in Port Moody who lamented the inability to open breweries in their own city! CAMRA is very excited by these changes and looks forward to working alongside the City of Coquitlam wherever possible to ensure that the breweries that open up there are giving consumers the most benefits they possibly can.

For one, we would love to interface with the City of Coquitlam and encourage them to follow the model laid out by the City of Port Moody to make this process as seamless as possible and assist in this in any capacity that we can. However, one of the areas we feel we can have the strongest impact would be to push for later transit hours in the areas where breweries are located. Late night public transit, particularly in the suburbs can be a huge detriment to life in the greater Vancouver Area. In an effort to help alleviate drinking and driving we would love to see Translink and the City of Coquitlam work to offer affordable and safe transit from these new community hubs – where ever they may be. Ultimately, we want to start walking alongside the city of Coquitlam and make sure that the model that we see there is one that is best caring for consumers and consumer interests.

That leaves us with the City of Port Coquitlam – which, as far as we know is still sitting working with zoning that make it hard for new breweries to open up. Our next steps there would be to build a case for amending the bylaws, get in touch with the city and have our voices heard as consumers. Depending on how that goes we may have to mount a larger campaign to ensure that the third of the tri-cities municipalities is contributing to what could be a powerhouse of beer in, not only the pacific-northwest, but perhaps the world!

Are you a member in Port Coquitlam or Coquitlam that is passionate about your community and wants to help us as we help shepherd some real change? Reach out to me! Shoot me an email at pres@camravancouver.ca so we can get you involved. Some of you already contacting me in order to be involved in our next major advocate campaigns, and you will be hearing from me shortly. But if you haven’t done so yet and being a part of this interests you, reach out, let’s talk!