News from Edmonton

[purpletigron]

The 10-year hangover for Albertans

"liquor privatization [has] ... resulted in significantly more [social and financial] costs than benefits to both the people and the government of Alberta."

What's the story, dear Albertans?

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I didn't live there ten years ago, but from what everybody's said, people are pretty happy with the result. For one thing, the stores are open a lot longer. :-)

-J

[purplejavatroll.livejournal.com]

Actually, not true. The stores used to be open every night until around 1, the way I remember it. Now, a lot of the ones that I go to are closed by 11 and some earlier than that. There's a lot of variance now, though, whereas before, all of them opened and closed at the same time.

There are, however, a lot more stores and the selection is much better. All the liquor did go up by quite a percentage over the first few months, though. Which was annoying, since they'd said that they would go down. Although no one was surprised, really.

I can't speak to whether or not there was a rise in alcoholism or not. Historically, I believe that there has always been a lot of liquor abuse in Alberta, especially in remote communities where there's very little else to do, especially oil communities. I'm not sure if I can find any numbers to compare with now or not.

pjt

[supergee.livejournal.com]

The phrase that comes to my mind is "moose shit." Just off the top of my head, fetal alcohol syndrome was hardly noticed 10 years ago, so an increase in the reported rate was inevitable, and turning lower alcohol tax rates into "the taxpayers are subsidizing the alcohol biz" indicates at least a nonstandard use of the word "subsidize."

[nlindq.livejournal.com]

Interesting. One additional point is that the supposed "great success" of liquor privatization was the incentive and justification for proceeding with energy deregulation. Deregulation has been disastrous for us so far--virtually no new competitors in the marketplace, prices have gone from the lowest non-hydro province to the highest overall, and even Ralph Klein is admitting that it hasn't gone well.