Public drinking bill in Saskatchewan adjourned

Drinkers will have to keep a cork in it in parks in Saskatchewan for a while longer.

On Tuesday afternoon, debate was adjourned on Bill 86, which would have allowed municipalities to decide for themselves whether to allow drinking in public outdoor places like public parks.

That means the bill will die on the order paper on the last day of session debate Wednesday, and will have to be reintroduced in the fall.

Jim Reiter, the minister responsible for the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority, said he was a bit disappointed in the result, but the bill will just come back up in the next sitting to be passed a year from now.

Reiter said the bill being introduced in the dying days of the legislative session wasn’t a political ploy, just that it took less time to work the bill out than he’d originally thought.

The bill needed unanimous consent to be fast-tracked on Tuesday to be in place this summer. The NDP didn’t want to give its support, and on Tuesday, the NDP’s SLGA critic, Nicole Sarauer, repeated her belief that proper consultation and discussion on the topic is needed before the bill passes.

It was last spring when Saskatoon city council first suggested allowing controlled alcohol consumption in some city parks.

Mayor Charlie Clark said the idea was born during the pandemic to enable people to gather and stay connected outdoors, while also using park space.

“We learned that places like Edmonton and Calgary had been trying out these targeted pilot projects that would allow people to have a picnic and have a bottle of wine or have a beer and have it be managed in a safe way,” Clark told reporters Tuesday before the bill died in the Legislature.

But, Clark added, there is a lot of consultation and consideration to be done before the rules are changed, and the work likely wouldn’t have been completed by the summer even if the legislation passed.

“There’s many steps that would be taken in order to make sure that whatever is done would be safe, would balance the ability for people to have fun with also not promoting unsafe drinking, and also recognizing that we live in a time when there’s a lot of addictions in the community,” the mayor said.

–With files from 650 CKOM’s Lara Fominoff