Life in Halifax, Nofuna Scotia

As part of his continued effort to justify the use of the moniker "Nofuna Scotia" the HRM chief of police has recently blamed bars and alcohol for high crime rate in Halifax.

As the Metro story puts it:

HRM drinks too much and Halifax Regional Police Chief Frank Beazley says he has the assault statistics to prove it.

He told the municipality’s police commission on Monday there’s way too much easy access to liquor in this town. Many people sit at home and drink heavily before going out late to the bar and pounding drinks until 3 a.m.

“If I could take the alcohol out of this, I could plummet the number of assaults in HRM,” he said.  

Beazley added that several of the 3,202 assaults last year involved people getting drunk and going home to beat a family member.

The access, hours the bars are open and the density of liquor establishments downtown combine to cause real problems.

“Why do we need that many bars in that one area of the community that require so many resources to police it?”

While I am sure it is the case that some number of Halifax's crimes were committed by people who had recently been drinking in bars, do we know that access to alcohol really lead to all that many crimes - or do criminals just happen to also be drinkers?   Do other communities with bar districts face similar problems?  If not, why not?

And is the chief of police really suggesting that some number of legally operated small businesses be closed or have their capacity to collect revenue severely restricted?  Might there not be other steps that we can take before this one?

And I am curious if the chief's suggestion that if he "could take the alcohol out of this, I could plummet the number of assaults in HRM" is accurate.  An interesting story from the Guardian today seems to suggest that people will go to great lengths to secure intoxicating substances in the face of prohibitions.  At least in the UK an ever-changing array of legal synthetic drugs seem to be popular at the moment.  And of course not much is know about these synthetic drugs and what kind of long-term impact they might have on their imbibers.  And should one not think about the risk of encouraging such a development be worth by changing alcohol rules?


Cameron: 26
Neil: 0

Get your act together NSLC

Yesterday Jeannette and I were walking through the local NSLC (provincially run liquor store) when we noticed an acquaintance of ours, who also happens to be a local winemaker, pictured and named in a display about locally produced wines. (In case you are curious, we did end up buying one of his products and were quite pleased with it.)

A few minutes after spotting this picture we made our way to the check out where, much to my surprise, I was IDed. As I am now almost 10 years over the legal age I am always surprised when I am IDed, particularly if I have previously made purchases in the establishment without being IDed.

Anyway, this morning while at the farmer's market Jeannette ran into our acquaintance and mentioned that we saw the display with his photo and name. This local winemaker then told Jeannette that recently when making a purchase in this same store, where his photo and name were prominently displayed, he too was IDed.

How is that for ineffective systems? I am not sure if their IDing system is worse than their staff product training system, but I am pretty sure that at least one or both of these systems is pretty far out of whack if something like this can happen.

Contradictory information from the feds on alcohol?

A story that has received some attention recently is a BC man's attempt to draw attention to the impact the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act is having on small wineries in Canada. The law makes it impossible to for wineries to sell directly to out of province clients or even for those clients to purchase wine and then themselves transport it to another province.

The particularly problematic section of the law seems to be section 3. (1), which I might as well quote here in full:

Notwithstanding any other Act or law, no person shall import, send, take or transport, or cause to be imported, sent, taken or transported, into any province from or out of any place within or outside Canada any intoxicating liquor, except such as has been purchased by or on behalf of, and that is consigned to Her Majesty or the executive government of, the province into which it is being imported, sent, taken or transported, or any board, commission, officer or other governmental agency that, by the law of the province, is vested with the right of selling intoxicating liquor.

I read this section to mean private citizens (among others) are prohibited from transporting alcohol across the national border as well as provincial borders. This national border aspect of the prohibition is an issue that hasn't really been raised in the coverage I have seen.

I find the absence of this discussion particularly surprising because I suspect that many residents of Canada as well as visitors to Canada have brought alcohol into the country with them, and I presume most of these people had no idea they were doing anything illegal.

My guess is that many people thought that what they were doing was fine because for years Canadian customs agents have been suggesting that it is fine to bring alcohol into the country. Actually, even now the CBSA website provides guidelines regarding how much alcohol one is allowed to bring into the country. Furthermore, it has at least been my experience that when one does bring alcohol into the country customs agents aren't particularly inclined to enforce or even mention the restrictions outlined in the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act.

Anyway, if I am clearly missing something in my analysis please let me know otherwise I will have to remain convinced that CBSA is facilitating the the illegal importing of alcohol by private citizens and has been doing so for years.