By Jonathan Ward
Ontario’s proposed beer keg registry would do little to curb keg parties and underage drinking, according to an informal survey by Centretown News.
The registry calls for each person buying one of the 59-litre containers to provide personal identification into a provincial database. Police departments could then use that information to check on large keg orders and conduct pre-emptive strikes on suspected parties.
Over the weekend of Oct. 26-27, Centretown News surveyed 15 students picking up kegs for Halloween parties at Ottawa’s Beer Store distribution centre. Of those 15, 13 said they would take active steps to avoid or deceive the proposed registry.
“I don’t think this [registry] is going to stop any keg parties,” says Omid Amidi, a fourth-year student at the University of Ottawa.
“And I don’t think it’ll stop any 18-year-olds from drinking.”
Supt. Damian Parrent, chair of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police (OACP) Alcohol and Gaming Committee, has been pushing for the registry since last June.
“Keg parties are a significant problem in university towns,” Parrent says. “They disrupt the neighbours’ quality of life and put a huge burden on the tax system.”
Most of the students surveyed say they know keg parties are disruptive, but consider them hallmarks of the student lifestyle.
Ottawa Police Sgt. Kal Ghadban has been a keg registry advocate for years. He says he expects buyers of the kegs, which contain the equivalent of 165 bottles of beer, to try to deceive the registry.
“People are always going to try and find ways around new laws,” Ghadban says. “The actual workings haven’t been hammered out yet – there are still a lot of details and what-ifs to sort out.”
Amidi says he thinks the registry would be ineffective at tracking kegs, as many keg buyers are post-secondary students living away from home.
“My license doesn’t say anything about Ottawa,” Amidi says. “Even if they started this program, which I’m against, they wouldn’t know where I live – the address on my ID is for my parents’ house in Toronto.”
Ghadban says this could be a problem, but the registry could adapt so keg buyers would have to provide their current address via a utility bill, for example.
“We realize this is still a way’s off,” Ghadban says. “But when you’re serving that much alcohol, there needs to be accountability and responsibility.”
Joel Marshall, a University of Ottawa student who bought three kegs on Oct. 27 for his Halloween party, says he could avoid responsibility if need be.
“If this registry happened, I’d give my keg money to two buddies and we’d each buy a keg instead of me buying all three. Then who’s responsible if the party gets out of hand?”
But Parrent says the registry would ideally require more than just the keg buyer’s identification.
“Keg buyers would have to disclose where they’re taking the keg, too,” Parrent says. “It would be a two-pronged system.”
Parrent says if police bust a party, they could call in kegs’ barcodes and find out who bought them.
If the kegs are not where the buyers said they would be, police could charge buyers with providing false information.
Marshall says the threat of being charged would not deter him, as he is already risking charges stemming from his keg party.
“I think if your party gets bad enough out of hand that the cops show up, the wrong address on a keg is the least of your worries.”
Amidi, a law student, says police should not have the right to demand where kegs are being taken.
“What is this, 1984? Since when can police tell you where to keep things you’ve bought? What if the location of the party changes?”
Keg registry advocates like Ghadban and Parrent say a keg registry is long overdue, and OACP will continue pushing for it when meeting with Ontario’s Ministry of Government Services before year’s end.