BC government releases liquor business advisory panel report and recommendations

Published June 22, 2018

Earlier this week, the BC government released the report of the BC Liquor Business Advisory Panel which was created last February to provide government with advice on improving British Columbia’s liquor distribution system and regulations.

Restaurants Canada was invited to join eight other liquor stakeholder organizations on the panel. The panel met for a number of days in March and April meeting with stakeholders, reviewing submissions and discussing issues and making recommendations before panel chair Mark Hicken submitted the panel’s report to the Deputy Minister’s Council on Liquor Policy at the end of April. Panel members could not discuss the report or recommendations until it was released this week.  Click here for a link to announcement and report.

There are a number of positive unanimous recommendations in the report impacting licensed Restaurants Canada members including a licensee liquor wholesale price, licensee-to-licensee sales (allowing members to buy from private retailers), as well as recommended changes to the problematic Non-Stocked item distribution system for licensees and LDB governance.

All of Restaurants Canada’s major liquor policy recommendations were included in the panel recommendations. This is also the first liquor policy review process in BC that resulted in unanimous recommendations from stakeholders representing a number of diverse liquor policy interests which should make implementing the recommendations easier for government. Implementing these recommendations would be a significant victory for licensed BC Restaurants Canada members.

The next step is to convince the NDP minority government to implement the recommendations. You can help by asking your licensed BC operators reach out to their local MLAs over the summer requesting that they support the unanimous Panel recommendations.

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