Advocates in the hospitality and retail sectors are pushing back on what they view as overly steep fines for serving minors alcohol.
What is worse, they say, is that liquor inspectors have no leeway to give warnings to business owners who sell alcohol to someone under 19 years old.
Rising Tide Consultants principal Bert Hick told BIV that B.C.’s Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch has alerted business owners that if they get caught in a sting done by government agents, they will not only get hit with a $7,000 fine for the infraction, but they will be retested in a future sting operation. If they fail that test, they will be punished with a fine between $11,000 and $15,000 or suffer a licence suspension of between 11 and 15 days.
“It’s just not fair ball,” Hick said.
“Serving a minor is a $7,000 fine while serving an intoxicated person is only a $3,000 fine.”
Hick said staff at licensed establishments and retail stores should not sell alcohol to minors and should check identification for anyone who appears to be young.
His beef is that the LCRB treats these infractions so harshly and that there is no leeway for warnings.
“A more serious offence is serving liquor to an intoxicated person or allowing a person to become or stay intoxicated in a licensed establishment, because in that case, that person is very likely to get into a car, and there could be a fatality,” he said.
“It becomes a life-safety issue.”
Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General defended the LCRB’s program to BIV by saying in an email that “restricting minors’ access to liquor is a key public safety priority.”
Nonetheless, liquor inspectors have leeway to give warnings to business owners when servers sell alcohol to intoxicated patrons, Hick said. That is not the case when an inspector finds that a server has served a minor, he added.
Hick said he has clients who have been hit with fines for serving minors – sometimes teenagers who have beards and appear to be older than they are.
The LCRB conducts sting operations where they send minors into bars, restaurants and stores while provincial agents watch them ask to buy alcohol and then see if the minor is served.
Business owners can appeal fines to the LCRB but most business owners do not appeal decisions because of the cost of hiring lawyers, Hick said.
Linda Ramos, who owns SoCal Restaurant & Lounge in Campbell River and received a $7,000 fine earlier this year, told BIV that the LCRB told her that she did not need a lawyer.
As such, she did not get one.
“If I had hired a lawyer, I probably would have beat it,” she said, referring to the $7,000 fine she must pay.
“Their team had a cutthroat lawyer that attacked all of our witnesses.”
The LCRB general manager’s delegate, Paul Devine, said in his May judgment that evidence showed Ramos’ restaurant had extensive liquor-service training and supervision for new staff that included ensuring that they did not serve minors. Still, he said, the company had little follow-up to ensure its policies were followed. There was also no method for staff to discuss issues.
The restaurant, he said, failed to show it could use a defence of due diligence in the case.
Ramos told BIV that she strongly disagreed with his assessment.
“They said, ‘You can’t prove that you had staff meetings,’” she said. “Had I known that I had to provide staff meeting notes for the past two years, I would have done that.”
She added that her establishment is a restaurant, not a bar, and that her staff routinely check identification for anyone they believe to be younger than 30 years old. The minor, therefore, appeared to be much older than they were.
In the 10 years that she has had a liquor licence, she has had no other infractions, she said. As a result, she said she thought she merited a warning.
Hick added that Devine is paid by the LCRB, and that a better process would be to have an independent tribunal separate from the LCRB.
Industry has long opposed government sting operations to detect selling to minors
Hospitality business owners have been upset with government stings aimed at catching staff serving minors since the government launched the program in 2011.
Back in 2013, the fine for that infraction was $7,500. The government has since lowered the penalty.
The amount of revenue the B.C. government collects from the program has also declined.
In 2024, the B.C. government generated $406,000 from fines and forced businesses to close for a total of 588 days because staff served minors, B.C.’s
Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General told BIV in an email.
Back in 2013, BIV reported that the British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch generated $807,500 in revenue in the 2012-13 fiscal year from fines levied under a program dubbed “minors as agents.”
That was a 115 per cent jump from the $375,000 that the program generated the previous year. The compliance rate for adhering to requirements to check identification for patrons who appear underage is high.
The B.C. government sent data for the past two years. It showed that in the 2024-2025 fiscal year, government liquor stores had an 88 per cent compliance rate following 26 inspections, while all other inspections, including those in private beer, wine and spirits stores, pubs, restaurants and other liquor-selling businesses had an 85 per cent compliance rate after 734 inspections.
By comparison, government liquor stores had a 94 per cent compliance rate after 63 inspections in the 2023-2024 fiscal year. That year, privately owned beer, wine and spirits stores had a slightly lower 86 per cent compliance rate following 490 inspections.
Restaurants, meanwhile, had a 76 per cent compliance rate following 463 inspections, according to the government.
Those numbers are up from an overall 71 per cent compliance rate 12 years ago, according to the BCLDB.
That included:
72 per cent compliance from 326 inspections at private liquor stores;
91 per cent compliance from 85 inspections at government liquor stores;
49 per cent compliance from 71 inspections at restaurants; and
64 per cent compliance from 73 inspections at weddings and other events.
