Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. This is a question for the Minister of Finance. Just for some context here, on April 16th of this year, there were some liquor restrictions for sales that you announced. I have some figures in front of me that people are allowed to buy no more than six 375-millilitre containers of spirits or a maximum daily purchase up of $200 for individual customers. I have a two-prong question. My first part of that question is: how are these amounts determined? The second part of that is: what consultation was carried out with our Indigenous leaders prior to the announcement of these amounts? Marsi cho.
Thank you, Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Liquor regulations are a regulation entirely within the department of finance and typically wouldn't necessarily be the subject of significant -- certainly not consultation as a legal concept but engagement, more generally. What we did do in this case, Mr. Speaker, is that certainly, at the same time that this was happening, there was a liquor-related motion by the Dene Nation that was made and a fairly lengthy response provided to them on April 7th. I was involved in an Indigenous governments' call that has been happening weekly now with the governments during the pandemic on April 9th to discuss the decision around closing of liquor stores. Then on April 15th, when the letter went out, that went out only after I would had that length conversation with the Indigenous governments and had received also correspondence from them. At that time, I sent a detailed letter to them to explain what was done. While that was the liquor changes that were made on April 16th that the Member makes mention of, they are regulations. They are changeable.
We got back on the phone and had another long conversation with the Indigenous governments on April 17th. On April 23rd, I had written to the Indigenous governments again, seeking their input on the changes to date and then some further changes that, again, a number of parties were requesting. On April 24th, I again went on to the Indigenous governments' call and had a lengthy discussion with them. At that point, set up a targeted call on April 28th, specifically with the Department of Finance to have a lengthy conversation with them around how the liquor regulations were working and whether further changes needed to be made. That is the one part of the question, Mr. Speaker. The second was on how the amounts were chosen. There was a real balance being struck between the desire to put some regulations that would create a restriction in place to try to target bootleggers, to try to target those who were buying mickeys, those who were buying large amounts and then taking them back to smaller communities, in particular, for resale, but also not to create a barrier that would hamper the health system by driving people to consume other types of alcohol. We looked at the kinds of consumption patterns that we could see, and we looked at who was being impacted and who was being targeted, and tried to target those who were seemingly purchasing for improper purposes, and not target the large proportion of individuals who can consume responsibly.
Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker, and Marsi cho to the Minister of Finance for those responses. I listened very carefully to those responses, and some of the feedback that I got from some of our Indigenous leaders in my riding was that these amounts were still way too high. If we get six of us going into a liquor store, I'm going to make an example of say, Hay River, and then we go into one of the surrounding communities, we could still have a party for a very, very long time. Do you know what I mean? These amounts are still very high.
I guess my second part of that question: have there been any specific requests from our Indigenous leaders to lower these amounts since then? Marsi cho.
Thank you, Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There have been requests around liquor for the last two months to impose complete bans, complete restrictions, to open it up, to make it available for sale from taxi cabs. I have had no end of requests and varying requests across the board. I simply can't accommodate every request because they are at opposites, one with another. I acknowledge that not every Indigenous leader's request to impose a complete ban has been followed. Obviously, that's not what we've done. Some of the Indigenous leaders who we spoke to were saying, "Please, just keep it as a simple restriction." There's not a simple solution to this, Mr. Speaker. I acknowledge that. I'm not going to make everybody happy with this one. We did our best to try to strike a balance between looking at the health system, looking at what we need to do to maintain the health system, trying to support some of the small businesses who were asking for changes to the Liquor Act, at the same time. As I've said on all of these calls, Mr. Speaker, the Liquor Act and the liquor regulations are not going to be where we address the fundamental problem of alcohol abuse in the territory. It's a crisis. It is absolutely a crisis, and it needs to be addressed in a much bigger way. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you for that response. Just listening, I want to thank you for staying engaged because I think that's a proper way to categorize that instead of consulting. I understand the need to keep businesses afloat, and it's so important because, like I've said, everybody's feeling the pinch during this crisis. On May 8th, I guess I mentioned, the class A and the class B licensed establishments are allowed to sell beer and alcohol with their food. I guess my final question is, what consultations were made with our local Indigenous governments before this was implemented?
I apologize. I should have been briefer in my original answer. I happened to have a chronology of the efforts we made because it's not the first concern that's been raised to me about what I've done to engage and the time we spent speaking to not only Indigenous governments but also our community governments and others. We did write out, seeking input. We also had two further conversations about this, and it was actually as a result of those conversations and of the input that we received that, in fact, we did not allow taxis to be involved in the sale and distribution of alcohol and that, if a licensed establishment now is going to include alcohol sales with their takeout, it has to be through their own delivery service; it cannot use the taxi cab. So we did remove that, and we also removed the sale of cannabis, which was also one of the proposals. Again, while it's not answering what everybody wanted, it certainly did make an effort, I believe, to be responsive to some of the requests that were being made.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Hay River South.
