This Morning I had a meeting with government representatives John Yap MLA, Ken Dawson and Suneil Karod to talk about the liquor issues that we feel require change. Joining me were a pair of heavyweight advocates CAMRA BC President Rick Green along newly minted CAMRA BC Powell River Branch President Paddy Treavor on flying visit. Big thanks to Paddy for coming out, he’s been pushing the government for years to get to this point and we needed his knowledge, enthusiasm and experience to be effective- also thanks for taking time out from CAMRA BC – PR work and planning the Oktoberfest bus trip on October 5th & 6th.
The 9am meeting was at the Labour Relations Board at Oceanic Plaza we had a lot planned and felt confident – Some of us were up until 5am putting the finishing touches on our submission!
The tone of the meeting was very relaxed straight from the start; we agreed to keep it conversational and presented them with some growlers filled with 33 acres of Starke (their new collaboration Helles Bock) and awarded Mr. Yap with a one year honorary membership of CAMRA BC – Vancouver Branch.
L-R: Paddy Treavor, Adam Chatburn, Rick Green, John Yap MLA, Ken Dawson. (not pictured Suneil Karod)
We listed our topics and worked through them at a good pace, we had been given a very generous 90 minute meeting which really indicates how far CAMRA BC has come over the last few years – we are now a serious stakeholder in British Columbia liquor culture – a long way from a small drinking club in Victoria!
These are our topics if you’d like to read our entire letter and presentation with more detail it’s available here:
CAMRA BC Liquor Review Meeting September 24 2013.
They were very attentive and asked some great follow up questions – a few of them stumped us but we’ll get back to them! For example do you know how many home-brewers there are in BC?
I genuinely believe that there are going to be some big changes coming out of this review that will have a beneficial effect on the culture of BC, not just in the craft beer community.
Again – A big thank you to everyone who sent in suggestions and to Rick Green for his work and especially Paddy Treavor- I believe it was Paddy’s persistence and campaign of righteous indignation that was instrumental in making this review happen.
If you haven’t gone to the BC Liquor Review website yet, get over there and make you views known! All the letters and meetings are publicly available – there’s some really interesting ideas. We’d love you to agree with our suggestions but if you don’t – that’s fine too, let’s have the conversation.
The next step is the twitter town hall this Sunday (29th) – I hope lots of you will help with #bcliquor and @CAMRA_YVR from 6pm. For more information and all the hashtags see the links above, check our twitter and facebook or read my previous post.
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