Bootleg Tracks

From what I know and have heard from reliable sources about the goings-on at a number of so-called legitimate bars around Charlottetown it is kind of hypocritical to come down hard on bootleggers on the one hand and on the other let these bars go on as they are.

I was at the meeting as well and agree with PRuk for the most part; I would go further and say I struck by the all around feebleness of the arguement from City Hall. They the moral high ground to carry the discussion and they weren’t able to make any substantial case for their position. Furthermore the supporters of bootleggers understand that the numbers are on their side, each of those voices reperesents at least 1 vote and in many cases several votes, that equation won’t be lost on the politicians (it surprises me that it appears to be lost on the Brown cabal). Some points that weren’t made last night(in no particular order): Bootleggers exist in dozens of Island communities and in most majors communities in Canada, this issue is not unique to Charlottetown and generally is not considered a problem elsewhere. Law enforcement is about containment and doesn’t do very well at prevention, the L&O cases presented were undermined by the grudging acknowledgement that the bootleggers were run pretty well and were less trouble than legal bars. This became a media issue as a result of the efforts of City Hall it did not spring onto the pages of The NatPost for any other reason than that City Council put it at the top of its agenda. For myself, I’ve been to Gordie’s a few of times in the past decade, I would say that it is pretty well run, has a well behaved and loyal clientle and I felt safer there than I ever did the few times I’ve had to walk down Kent St. late on Friday or Saturday night. There are many issues for the City Hall to deal with and I’m concerned when so much time and so many resources are spent on something that will not change, let alone improve, our community; (to quote) “…not a jot not a tittle…”.

You’re right it’s class-based - I don’t see any bootleggers in Brighton or Lewis Pt. Park, etc. As the neighbourhoods where the bootleggers are located continue to gentrify, this will become a bigger issue until the law is consistently enforced. Bar locations in Charlottetown are horribly planned already but I guess most old communities have terrible planning. But we don’t need more drinking holes in residential areas, legal or illegal. Don’t forget the safety issues (a guy I went to school with died a year or 2 ago at a BL), and their lack of scrutiny to provincial health/safety inspections, flagrantly ignoring fire codes, etc. I don’t believe for a minute that this is a “quaint tradition” like Ed MacDonald or Jack McAndrew call it. City Hall has been on the receiving end of complaints about bootleggers for years so people shouldn’t attack Bruce & other councillors for being the messengers. There are genuine concerns of property-owners/renters near these “establishments” and if they speak with a unified voice, then their government is obliged to listen and begin enforcing existing laws. Jim McNeil always used to point out that it’s foolish to think that new laws will eliminate bootlegging, just good police work using existing laws. Also, I could care less about national media poking fun at us over this issue - it is our problem to solve - but sometimes a bit of national exposure is a good thing. Island media are too timid to confront the meat of the story in issues like bootlegging, Meteor Creek, political patronage/nepotism, etc. /enough rambling :-)

Its part of a pattern of Island society’s deceitful tendencies led largely by Island politicians short-term ambitions. Sure, we have laws against bootlegging, wink, wink. Besides, its just the people in the “lower east end” of Charlottetown(as it was referred to on radio the other day) that go to them. And God knows, wink, wink, they’d be getting drunk somehow anyway. You can’t really control them, so let them have their neighbourhood establishments and we can carry on telling the little old ladies in the temperance union that bootlegging is illegal. By having laws but not enforcing them, politicians are able to play to both the pro and con constituencies and, through either silver tongue or threats, get votes from both. Its the same with the patronage issue. Most politicians will publically stand against the practice, yet Islanders continue to call their representatives if they are out of work. I wonder why? The real way to get rid of bootleggers is to allow liquor sales at corner stores, loosen liquor-serving regulations for legal operations, have better urban planning, and take politicians’ discretion out of regulatory decisions. Its interesting to note that both Richard Collins and Bruce Garrity are “from away” and may not understand the nuances of the old wink wink game so tacitly familiar to Island politicians and those that feel their influence.

I agree with you Rusty. It seems that the intimacy of Island society twists politicians’ abilities to stand up for their beliefs… then the ‘wink wink’ mentality you mention starts to creep in. But I don’t think being CFA is the issue - instead it’s how hard you try to avoid getting sucked into the little bubble of issues that Island politics has always been (or has become?). Drug dealers & crack houses are the modern-day version of the bootlegger and it’s just too bad that police don’t take advantage of the nature of Island society, where as you note, everyone knows what’s going on, and where it’s taking place, so why not do something about it?

What’s interesting to me about the “law is the law” argument is that we’re not at all certain what to do when a substantial group of people act like that doesn’t matter. Bruce Garrity says it leads to anarchy. I’m not so sure. It does remind us, however, that the law, like many other things, is an artificial construct we choose to live by (or not).

The “the law is the law” argument is resorted to only when the reasons behind a law cannot be explained or justified. In a free and democratic society, we should have a higher standard of evaluation. If a law is good, it should be able to be justified as a necessary measure for the protection or general good of a society; if a law cannot be so justified, repeal it.

But this law is not hard to enforce or make enforceable. All it takes it a few months of constant arrests, fines, charges for breaches. It is a political question only and one has to wonder why there is this demand. Charlottetown has relatively few bars compared to Halifax or St. John’s. Are too few being licensed?

Class is not about money. At least not entirely.

This reminds me of the issue of camping in front of City Hall in San Francisco. There was a prima facie reasonable law against it, and yet the campers were homeless and San Francisco didn’t have enough shelters for them (and not because SF provided fewer homeless services than other cities of its size, but paradoxically in part it seems because it provided more, and so attracted homeless from all over). Even if every law that a society has enacted is reasonable, that doesn’t mean that perfect compliance will create a happy and stable society. Perfect compliance might not even be the way to produce the most happiness and stability that that set of rules can produce. It may be that the optimum comes when you allow a little slop and/or occasionally go with the flow.

I used to live across the hall from a guy in an apartment building in Halifax who sold pot by the shopping bag-full. I don’t care what people do on their own time, but if someone’s trafficking near my residence, I’m going to put up a hell of a fuss. The police and my councillor probably logged more than 50 complaints from me before they sent in a SWAT team and shut down the operation. Police often have better things to do (like catch robbers and murderers) than worry about these things. The run-down, chopped-up, Victorian houses of the east end and the area between Queen/University from Euston up to the old Royalty Mall have more than their share of substandard accomodations and low rent apartments. As I’ve never frequented a bootlegger, I have no idea whether the proprietor of one of these places “owns” or “rents”… It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that citizens owning property would not stand for a bootlegger (or anything else for that matter) which would devalue their investment. Island moonshine and beer 24/7 first… what’s next? Crack cocaine & 8 foot fences with pit bulls behind them?

Derek, the best estimate from 1 prominent Bootlegging family is 10 or there abouts. The “property values” argument hilites one of my most abiding concerns about this whole imbroglio and that is simply this: Poverty, drinking, drug use and other illegal activities are not caused by bootlegging and will not go away as a result of closing the bootleggers we now have. The poor will still need housing and will continue to cluster in areas that provide housing they can afford. In fact I don’t think bootlegging will disappear it will simply go elsewhere, further underground and harder to contain.

Lots of good points made here. It’s difficult to arrive at any absolute position on this but I’ll make an observation. There’s a commercial property for sale not half a block from the most famous of the bootleggers. It would make an excellent location for a neighbourhood “local” (to use the Coronation Street analogy that I’ve heard proponents use). Wouldn’t it be simple for the bootleggers to go legit? Maybe not. Maybe there’s something inherent in the liquor laws and tax codes that makes the bootlegger model inviable. Can we create dual policy liquor laws — one for neighbourhood pubs with small maximum capacity restrictions but otherwise relaxed regulations; and another for the rest? I think the bootleggers need incentives. We need to make honest business people out of them. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing I couldn’t compete if I tried to open a bar to cater to the bootlegger clientele right now. There are a lot of old corner stores in the downtown, put out of business by the large grocery chains. They’d make excellent little pubs.