Kuujjuaq businesses interested in selling booze

Sometime this summer Kuujjuamiut will be asked once again to say what they think about the retail sale of booze being sold in their community.

The Northern Store, the Landholding Corporation, which owns the local bar, and the Kuujjuaq Co-operative are all keen to resume the sale of alcohol locally.

“It’s up to them to sell it to the public,” said Kuujjuaq Mayor Larry Watt.

Booze is a potential moneymaker in Kuujjuaq. The sale of alcohol in the local bar and licenced bar already nets about $2 million a year for the local Landholding Corporation, which owns two establishments.

The bar is reportedly the second largest seller of Labatt’s Blue in Quebec.

Alcohol orders through grocery outlets, which send booze up to Nunavik, creates another $2 million in revenue, much of which comes from Kuujjuaq, the region’s largest community.

Watt said it’s important for Kuujjuamiut to have a voice in whether they want alcohol to be sold in the community and if so, by whom.

A planned public consultation could possibly be followed by a community referendum.

If beer is sold in Kuujjuaq, it won’t be for the first time.

In 1979, the co-operative store first started selling beer and in 1983 the Ikkaqivvik Bar opened.In 1996, as a way of putting an end to a string of alcohol-related deaths, Johnny Adams, then the mayor of Kuujjuaq, closed the Ikkaqivvik Bar for two weeks and stopped all retail beer sales.

During that period, police noticed a drop in violent offences.

Residents then decided in a referendum to keep the bar open, but to stop selling beer at the co-op store.

But the question of over-the-counter beer sales didn’t die there.

An April 2001 referendum allowed residents to decide once again whether beer should be sold in Kuujjuaq’s local stores. They were asked a simple, yes-or-no question, “Do you think beer should be sold in Kuujjuaq?”

The idea didn’t pass.

In June 2001, the Kativik Regional Police Force moved to control access to the Quebec liquor commission’s web site, which allows Nunavimmiut with credit cards to order booze online.

But access to online ordering is still readily available to many Nunavimmiut.

If retail alcohol sales are allowed locally this time, beer, wine and spirits will likely be available.

One way to regulate alcohol sales would be for clients to select and purchase their alcohol and then wait 24 hours before picking up the order. This would allow the retailers to check on whether the clients have any legal undertakings to observe or any other reasons not to have their order filled.