Nunavut kicks off liquor review as alcohol sales rise

A pile of seized vodka is displayed at an RCMP news conference in Iqaluit this past March. Statistics Canada figures show legal alcohol sales are on the rise in Nunavut, but the study doesn’t factor in booze purchased from bootleggers, or bought elsewhere and shipped into the territory. (FILE PHOTO)

A panel looking at changes to Nunavut’s liquor act took its first steps Tuesday as new figures from Statistics Canada show legal sales of alcohol in Nunavut grew at the second-highest rate in the country.

Finance minister Keith Peterson, who’s responsible for the Nunavut Liquor Commission announced the 10-member panel in the Legislative Assembly this past March.

The panel’s meeting this past Tuesday was simply to get set up, said Chris D’Arcy, the assistant deputy finance minister for policy and planning.

“They’re going to get their act together, meet each other and talk about terms of reference,” D’Arcy said, speaking the day before the meeting took place.

In March, Peterson told Nunatsiaq News the task force would travel to every community in Nunavut, and could take more than a year to finish its work.

The group is made up of MLAs, members of local alcohol committees, officials from the Government of Nunavut, and representatives from Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., Qulliit Nunavut Status of Women and the RCMP.

Nunavut’s liquor laws were last amended in 2006, and all signs point to an increase in alcohol consumption since then. Figures released Tuesday by Statistics Canada, show sales of booze for the year ending March 31, 2009, rose 5.8 per cent. That’s the second highest increase in the country after Saskatchewan.

The StatCan report shows $5.4 million in alcohol sales, although a figure directly from the Nunavut Liqour Commission puts the figure at $5.8 million.

Beer accounted for more than 71 per cent of sales, while spirits (hard alcohol like vodka and rum) made up 23 per cent of the total. Wine represented less than six per cent of the Nunavut Liquor Commission’s sales.

But that’s only a portion of all the alcohol consumed in the territory. Statistician Jo Ann MacMillan acknowledged the StatCan report doesn’t include alcohol legally purchased with import permits through southern retailers.

She said the figures are all provided by provincial and territorial liquor commissions.

Figures from the Nunavut Liquor Commission show the agency brought in $460,000 worth of import permit fees for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009.

The StatCan study also doesn’t include the value of booze for personal consumption brought back from the south by Nunavummiut without an import permit.

And the figures don’t account for the alcohol Nunavummiut drink that’s obtained from bootleggers. No one knows how much booze that is exactly, or how much money people spend on it.

But the RCMP seized hundreds of bottles of illegal alcohol, mostly vodka, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the first three months of 2010. At a news conference in March, police said booze and cash seized from bootleggers totalled $400,000.

In an interview this past Tuesday, Sgt. Jimmy Akavak said the amount of booze and cash seized by police since January is probably higher than average, but acknowledged the seizures amount to just a fraction of the illegal alcohol sold in Nunavut.

“That’s probably just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

Still, the StatCan figures show Nunavut and the Northwest Territories combined have the second highest per capita spending on alcohol at $943.60 per year. Nunavut and the NWT are combined in that report.

Yukon, where the average person spends a whopping $1,217.40 every year on booze, spends the most per capita on alcohol in the country.

Nationwide, alcohol sales rose three per cent.