Rankin Inlet to get liquor distribution centre

Cambridge Bay MLA Kelvin Ng announced that Nunavut’s second liquor distribution centre will be located in Rankin Inlet.

“This will be an opportunity for the Nunavut Liquor Commission to capture the revenues that are currently flowing to other provincial and territorial governments and agencies that are not coming back to Nunavut,” Ng said.

It’s also expected to cut down on the import of cheaper, bootlegged alcohol into the Kivalliq by lowering the cost of buying legally-ordered supplies.

Consumers in the region have been grumbling because they have been paying more than ever for booze. Anyone who used to order alcohol from Yellowknife before 1999 now has to buy an import permit before ordering from the NWT, or pay big bucks to ship booze from Iqaluit.

“The distribution centre will also allow us to develop better statistics on the amount of liquor being sold in our territory,” Ng said. “By creating a second liquor distribution centre, we do not expect that the sale of alcohol in Nunavut will increase as those sales are already taking place.”

Ng said the new warehouse will also let the liquor commission better account for and track the liquor being sold in Nunavut.

The distribution centre should be fully operational by next summer.