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Booze can flourishes in Iqaluit, thanks to toothless liquor act

DWANE WILKIN
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — Authorities say they are powerless under Nunavut's liquor laws to shut down an unlicensed speakeasy on the West 40 road.

And that's the way it should be in a democratic society, according to Joseph Morneau, general manager of the members-only Explorers Club of Iqaluit.

"It's been a pain in the ass to a lot of people who are frustrated it's still going," RCMP Cst. Mitch Monette said after police paid a visit to the establishment last weekend.

"I'm hoping the new government will have a look at this law and just do a total revamp of it and make it workable and enforceable."

The Explorers Club operates on a lot leased by school teacher Joseph Morneau, who in 1997 declared his home an independent country called Arctica.

Police entered the premises in the wee hours of the morning last Friday while Morneau was out of the country, telling bar staff they had no right to be selling alcohol.

"We were a model for all liquor establishments," Morneau said on Wednesday. "Why we were bothered in the first place is beyond me."

He says the RCMP is just trying to spoil the club through intimidation.

"They couldn't do anything legally because we weren't breaking any laws. So what they did was the next best thing. They made a show — a pretence — of acting under some legal authority in order to frighten the members."

The names of dozens of Explorers Club patrons appear in a membership book on the premises, furnished with bar stools, lounge chairs, a billiards table and a ceiling painted in images of nude women.

According to documents with the Nunavut Legal Registry, based in Yellowknife, the club was founded in March 1997 "to foster the arts throughout Nunavut, to promote and support the efforts of emerging artists in Nunavut."

One of the other stated objectives of the Explorers' Club, of which Morneau was a founding member, is to "encourage and promote an understanding and appreciation for the traditional knowledge of the land."

The club has not filed financial statements or an updated list of directors with the legal registry since its founding. One of the club's original subscribers, Nuyalea Kipanik, is currently serving a jail term for narcotics offences.

No licence needed

Police have forwarded their concerns about the operation to the NWT Liquor Licensing Board, but Morneau maintains the club is operating within the letter of the law.

Morneau said he applied for a private club's license to serve alcohol, but was told there was a moratorium on such permits for at least two years.

"In our view, when the government abdicates its responsibility then it's not an issue. You can't have it both ways. You can't say 'you have a right to a license, but we're not going to give it to you for two years.'"

He said he doesn't need a license to sell alcohol, anyway, because he's operating a private club.

"We're not a public place. I can't say what people think in their pea-sized brains, alright? They can think whatever they like, I can't control that. But we were minding our own business, what we were doing was amongst ourselves."

Membership fees have been selling for about $15. Bartenders serve alcoholic drinks in exchange for cash.

That itself would be an offence under current liquor laws, but police require substantially more evidence than hearsay under the Nunavut Liquor Act to proceed with charges.

"We need someone to tell us, 'Yeah, we bought some liquor there,' and that would give us grounds to go in and charge him," said Cst. Monette, who works with the RCMP's drug detachment.

"However, if we charge him, all he'll get is a $250 fine, first time around."

The Explorers Club is merely the most blatant manifestation of widespread contraband alcohol sales in the new territorial capital, police say.

Liquor act useless

"Our concern now is the bootleggers that are making money hand over fist," Cst. Monette said.

"Every second taxi driver is selling liquor, and the only way we can get them is if someone goes and buys a bottle and comes to us and says, 'Here's the bottle, I just bought it off him five minutes ago,' and they're prepared to go and testify."

Police complain that the wording of the liquor control legislation, inherited from the Northwest Territories, is so vague that it's impossible to enforce.

"This liquor act is terrible, it's the worse one I've ever seen," Cst. Monette said.

"First of all the penalties are very very lax, so a bootlegger who brings in a dozen bottles, he just has to sell one bottle to pay his fine."

Certain liquor permitting provisions of the Act are also a nuisance.

A permit to import liquor into Iqaluit, for instance, where liquor retail sales have been banned since 1976, is supposed to expire after one year.

Import permits elsewhere in Nunavut expire after three months.

It's widely known that many otherwise law-abiding residents don't bother to renew their permits.

"There's nothing we can do," said Monette, " The law's not specific enough."

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