Lots of Support for CAMRA’s #unhappyhour Stance

In the week since the BC Liberals dropped the ball (again) with liquor reform we’ve been inundated with emails and letters of support from the responsible beer drinkers of BC who are rightly outraged that the government has jacked up the price of beer for so many people. This gross betrayal comes after the mess they made of beer in supermarkets, something so simple that most of the rest of the world doesn’t even consider it an issue.

The betrayal comes from the fact that they publicly offered to take people’s suggestions and then cut us out of the discussion to come to an agreement with the hospitality pressure groups and health care scaremongers to jack up the price of beer. The execution of these changes leaves a huge amount to be desired and lots of us consumers are feeling let down, but not very surprised by their bungling.

A few months ago CAMRA BC went out on a limb and tentatively supported the impending increase in taxation for higher alcohol beers (providing an equal cut in lower alcohol beers was forthcoming and that the process was handled in a sensible, collaborative way); well one thing is clear – sense and real collaboration are not virtues that run through the BC Liberal caucus. Perhaps we should have donated to the party so that they would at least meet with us (so far our requests for a meeting have not even been acknowledged). Consequently we’ve decided to withdraw our tentative support as we believe that the BC Liberals will turn this into another tax grab at the expense of hard-working beer drinkers or at the very least make a complete confused mess of the implementation.

Just to clarify our position: CAMRA BC isn’t against the idea of happy hour – as you know it was one of the things we asked for in the liquor review, we are just outraged at the level of minimum pricing, we were anticipating something more in line with the rest of Canada (and the world). The highest price set amongst the provinces so far is $.18 in Manitoba, $.167 in Ontario and $.16 in Alberta. VanCity Buzz covered it here.

We’ve had a lot of people asking what they can do, whether we’re going to start a petition or a facebook group or twitter-storm etc. well we’ve talked about the effectiveness of all of these and we’ve decided to ask you to get involved and write directly to these various bureaucrats and autocrats. Fill their inboxes with your opinions, copy and paste anything you want or better still put it in your own words. Please don’t send anything abusive no matter how upset you are.

Firstly find out who your MLA is and how to contact them: https://www.leg.bc.ca/mla/3-1-1.htm

Next, here’s a list of who you could consider contacting (just don’t expect a response, if you do let us know!) and please cc pres@camravancouver.ca as well, after all WE care what you think!

Attorney General Suzanne Anton

JAG.Minister@gov.bc.ca

@SuzanneAnton

250 387-1866

PO BOX 9044
STN PROV GOVT
Victoria BC
V8W9E2

John Yap MLA

John.Yap.MLA@leg.bc.ca

@John_Yap

Richmond – Steveston Constituency Office
#115-4011 Bayview Street,
Richmond, BC
V7E 0A4

Cindy Stephenson – Senior Policy Analyst

Cindy.Stephenson@gov.bc.ca

@CJStephenson