[Xtoval]

Funny how a comment can be picked apart on this forum!

I think an important thing we can do for urban redevelopment is to liberalize our liquor laws. The problem is that you can't have free standing bars, except for cabarets, which must provide entertainment, or private clubs. You just can't have a small corner bar serving booze. It's illegal.

Ontario and BC allow free-standing bars, that is all I was saying. Plus having lived in Toronto for a long time, there is no doubt in my mind its bar scene is incomparably better than Winnipeg's. Not because it is a bigger city but because imaginative, creative people can afford to open bars.

The original rationale of Manitoba's laws was to close down the Main Street pool hall/bars that attracted young men fresh off the train and to prop up rural hotels during the slow season, by giving hotels the monopoly on beer sales and beverage rooms.

Why do you think Canad Inn bars survive? Because our antiquated liquor laws hold them up as the ideal. The hotel lobby fights like hell to prevent changes in the regulations. The NDP won't touch the unionized MLCC.

I am in Winnipeg a lot and walk around and think some entrepreneur should open up a bar in some old building full of character, as they would in nearly any other North American or European city I've visited. But then I remember Manitoba liquor laws make that impossible.