Let’s call it a tiny step forward: The BC Liberals have lowered the minimum price for pitchers of beer.
The province announced on Friday that they’d lower the minimum price of beer to 20 cents per ounce, but only in quantities of 50 ounces or more. This means pitchers have been reduced, but the original minimum price for pints, at 25 cents per ounce, remains the same.
The decision comes one month after the Liberals announced their controversial “happy hour” law, which set the minimum price for a pint of beer at $5 – effectively increasing the price of alcohol in BC.
Critics decried the move, prompting left-wing pundit Bill Tieleman to start his “Fix BC Happy Hour” campaign on Facebook.
“Only in British Columbia will the price go up for happy hour,” Tieleman told WE Vancouverin June. “It makes us a laughing stock in terms of the entire world! There’s nowhere else you can go to where the price goes up.”
Still, the latest price adjustment is considered too little, too late by some critics. On the VanEast Beer Blog, beer writer Paddy Treavor called the move a “knee-jerk reaction to negative feedback” to the BC happy hour laws.
