Hacker News Reader

Comment by StudentStuff | Hacker News Reader

I had never heard of keeping your receipt with your beer until visiting a liquor store in Alberta. Apparently its common to confiscate beer lacking a receipt, as its assumed to be from another province? Seems very silly, but my perspective is skewed as a Seattleite ($25 fine for drinking in public that is rarely enforced).

View on HN

I have never heard of this either, but yeah... through a quirk in Canadian law, only the crown is allowed to transport liquor between provinces, modulo some exceptions for small quantities: https://constitutional.findlaw.ca/article/how-much-alcohol-c...

I can't legally very much beer or wine back to Saskatchewan when I make a trip to Alberta, even though it's significantly cheaper there.

Edit: I knew about the "no transport between provinces" thing, but I didn't know about the receipt thing. I suspect that if you're in Alberta, with Alberta plates, you're not going to have your beer confiscated. If you're in Saskatchewan with Alberta plates, and have a trunk full of beer... they're probably going to suspect you bought it all cheap at home and are bringing it to friends.

>only the crown is allowed to transport liquor between provinces

Coincidentally, that restriction was just removed! The Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs announced it today. [1]

However, provinces and territories can still legislate their own barriers. But federally, the law no longer stands.

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/intergovernmental-affairs/news/2019...

Holy crap! I bet that’s why this article got dredged up. That’s really great. Thanks for the heads up!

I've never heard of this happening. My parents live in BC near the AB border and buy liquor from AB weekly.

liquor in AB is no longer significantly cheaper than BC, with the exception of maybe some hard alcohol. Beer and Wine are pretty much a wash...

In fact, last time I was living in Alberta but regularly driving to BC a couple years ago, it was cheaper to buy most beers/wines in BC, and nearly the same on hard alcohol (mostly because of Costco liquor stores being available in AB but not BC).

Yes and No. They buy at Costco, which is cheaper than the liquor stores in their town. In BC only liquor stores can sell, whereas in AB grocery stores can as well. This can lead to grocery stores being cheaper than liquor stores.

I am from Alberta and have never heard of this. Did this happen to you?

When we got pulled over, yes, we were checked for it. 15km/hr too fast was a sub-$40 USD ticket for the driver after conversion rate, pretty low compared to the $120 for 8mph over tickets I've seen in Seattle.

So they didn't end up stealing your beer, because you were able to show a receipt? I wonder what becomes of the beer of those less fortunate.

Presumably they go into the Officer Memorial Slush fund?

When was that? Fifteen years ago, I got a photo radar ticket of $130 for 13km over the limit in Alberta.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com