Calgary Sun says No Recession Drinking ? You want recession proof? Try 80 proof.
Actually, you can go with alcohol of pretty much any strength, whether it’s wine, spirits or beer, and the result stands.
Alberta, it seems, is drowning its sorrows, or maybe just drinking to forget.
Despite an economy in full hangover mode, Albertans are consuming more booze than ever, while spending record amounts of cash on gambling.
That’s the conclusion of the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission’s annual update on the sins of Alberta, which shows people in this province sucking back an extra 11.8 million litres of alcohol since the 2013-14 fiscal update, while contributing an extra $57 million to provincial coffers via gambling.
If there’s one guy who’s not surprised to see people still drinking, it’s Bill Robinson, the AGLC’s president and chief executive officer.
“When recessions come, alcohol consumption typically stays steady,” said Robinson, who oversees what is easily Alberta’s most lucrative voluntary revenue stream.
No one forces people to drink, but Albertans are clearly keen volunteers, guzzling an extra 4.5 million litres of beer alone.
Robinson says some habits change, like choosing a cheaper plonk over the top-shelf stuff.
“There are some dynamics that do change,” he said.
“People don’t drink more or less in an economy like this, but the do choose different types of drinks — so if you have someone who normally drinks high-end wine, you see them dropping down a shelf to something slightly cheaper.”
The AGLC’s 2014-15 annual report, online at www.aglc.ca, shows a province either drinking to numb their economic misery, or simply sticking to old habits with a vengeance — after all, Statistics Canada says Alberta ranks second only to Quebec when it comes to drinking, just ahead of Newfoundland and Labrador.
That doesn’t surprise Robinson either.
The AGLC boss, a former Mountie, says Alberta is a young province (again, according to Stats Can, we’re the youngest) and he says that adds up to a very sociable population.
“Our consumption is high in part because of that young demographic, and that keeps our consumption a little higher than that of other provinces,” said Robinson.
Overall, the flow of intoxicating fluid is up across the board.
As well as that extra 4.5 million litres of beer, Albertans toasted each other with an additional 3.3 million litres of wine.
In terms of hard alcohol, drinkers in this province put back and extra 550 thousand litres, and when cider and coolers were tallied, another 340 thousand litres were slurped.
For a province with the highest booze prices in Canada, that adds up to a lot of cash: 2.5 billion in the last fiscal year, versus 2.4 billion the year before.
Of course, some of that extra drinking and revenue is due to population increases, which hit 4.2 million people in 2015, and Robinson says that overall, officials with the AGLC are not concerned about the extra drinking.
“On the liquor side, we see strong but not excessive growth,” he said.
It’s the same story with gambling, with total revenue from electronic, non-electronic and charitable gaming totalling $2.1 billion in the 2014-15 fiscal year.
Both liquor and gaming profits are returned to Alberta, after expenses of course — and the report states that for 2014-15, “more than $1.5 billion from provincial gaming was placed in the Alberta Lottery Fund and nearly $766 million went to the General Revenue Fund from liquor and licensing operations.”
The Lottery Fund goes towards volunteer and community-based initiatives across the province, while the booze cash pays for everything from roads to bridges and parks.
And despite the economy, the AGLC also deals in hope.
Robinson says people do tend to keep gambling in a recession, but the kind of game they choose to play changes.
“You find ticketed lotteries start to pick up, while VLTs and slot machines come down in this kind of economy,” he said.
“It all boils down the amount of disposable income people have to spend.”
michael.platt@sunmedia.ca