Officials from the Kenora & District Chamber of Commerce say they have an important bone to pick at both City Hall and Queen’s Park.

Chamber President Andy Scribilo, who also ran for Mayor back in 2022,  says that he’s heard from Kenora’s local businesses that when it comes to expanded alcohol sales in the downtown core, enough is enough.

Expanded alcohol sales came into effect across Ontario on Aug. 1, 2024, at the behest of Premier Doug Ford and his plan to make it possible for convenience stores, grocery stores and gas stations to start selling beer and liquor on their shelves.

The move – which experts say could cost taxpayers more than $1 billion – was at the time panned by number of critics, such as the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Canadian Mental Health Association of Ontario, Mental Health & Addictions Ontario, the Canadian Public Health Association, and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction, all of which suggested that more alcohol would mean more people drinking at younger ages.

Here in Kenora, Coun. Lindsay Koch introduced a notice of motion at City Hall aimed at restricting alcohol sales at the local level, but the rest of Council shot her idea down with a 5-2 vote.

Now, half a year after expanded alcohol sales were initially put into place, Scribilo, as well as Chamber Manager Alexander Evans are trying to re-litigate the issue with both the provincial and municipal governments.

“We’re not saying get rid of all of it, we’re saying we’ve got to limit it,” Scribilo recently told the Miner and News.

“It’s about how much alcohol, where alcohol gets sold, and the effects it’s having on our downtown,” Evans added.

“When you’ve got a bank manager opening up his branch at 7 in the morning, and people are already intoxicated across the street because they’ve already had access to alcohol, that’s an issue as far as we’re concerned.”

Another high ranking public figure in town, who did not wish to be named, has confirmed with our newsroom that they believe expanded alcohol sales to be a major issue affecting the community.

So far, Scribilo and Evans have already spent some time with Kenora-Rainy River MPP Greg Rickford, who they said pointed them in the direction of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), which generally regulates the province’s laws and overall approach to liquor sales.

“He was thinking we were there to thank him for bringing all the alcohol to Kenora, but it was the total opposite,” Scribilo quipped.

“We did have a good conversation, though,” Evans added, “and he told us to take the route of compliance with the AGCO, and to try and get them to treat those places (gas stations and convenience stores) the same way they treat restaurants.”

As a member of the restaurant industry, Evans said he’s no stranger to officials visiting around town to check on smart serve statuses, whether or not anyone’s been over-served, and to make sure no one under 19 is drinking.

When it comes to other stores now selling alcohol in Kenora, Evans said he can “clearly see some that are not following the same rules.”

Notably, last year also saw the short-lived introduction of what officials called a “controlled entrance” program at the local LCBO, which for a brief time was set to require shoppers to produce ID before being admitted to building.

The provincial government cancelled the program citing privacy concerns after just a few days – and before it could even be implemented – but in more recent times, the Mayor and other officials from the City of Kenora have indicated that they would like to see the program return.

When Scribilo and Evans talked about this with Rickford, they claim he told them the province is not in the businesses of infringing on peoples’ freedoms, which is something the “controlled entrance” program would theoretically entail.

Evans nonetheless believes that moving forward, statistics compiled by the Northwestern Health Unit cannot be ignored, because Kenora has some of, if not the worst rates in all of Ontario for alcohol-related harms, and by extension longer than average wait times at the Lake of the Woods District Hospital.

“We have 14 times the amount of hospitalizations here, than the provincial average, due to alcohol,” Evans said.

According to the NWHU, when it comes to emergency room visits for reasons caused directly by alcohol, the rate in Kenora is 6,127 visits per 100,000 people, versus the provincial average of just 543 per 100,000, which accounts for 8 per cent of all visits to the local ER.

“That takes away from my freedoms as a taxpayer to use universal healthcare, because the healthcare system up here is jam-packed due to alcohol,” Evans continued.

The Miner reached out to Rickford’s office for comment on this issue, but as of March 4, our newsroom has not heard back. We have also reached out to the managers of local downtown gas stations, but they too have yet to respond.

Beyond the purview of the provincial government, Scribilo and Evans explained that they plan to return to City Hall sometime this year to try and compel Council to reconsider somehow restricting sales at the local level.

“I want to say to them, maybe this isn’t the best for Kenora,” Scribilo said.

“I know we’re a tourist town, and I love going to Safeway and grabbing a steak with some beer or a bottle of wine. For responsible people, that’s a good thing – but that’s not everyone we’re dealing with here.”