By Ashley Wills

Sask. residents polled on private liquor stores

Jun 9, 2014 | 1:31 PM

Saskatchewan residents have been polled on where they stand when it comes to privatizing liquor stores.

In recent weeks, Premier Brad Wall has hinted that he is considering further privatizing the province's liquor business.

“We were curious to know… where Saskatchewan people sat on this issue and so we went and polled the information and we thought it would be great to share with everyone else,” Lang McGilp, senior research executive with Insightrix Research Inc., said.

The independent poll asked residents how they would like to see liquor stores operated.

“We see quite a divided split here. We have 26 per cent of residents who believe they should all be public, 34 per cent who support the current approach and 23 per cent who support privatizing everything,” McGilp explained Monday on John Gormley Live.

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“What it shows me is that the biggest chunk of people are kind of comfortable with wading in the waters that we're doing right now provincially with the liquor stores,” he said.

Of that 26 per cent who think the stores should remain public, most of them also answered that they would vote for the NDP.

On the flip side, the majority of those who are supportive of privatizing all liquor stores indicated they would vote for the Sask Party.

McGilp said it is not a clear party divide.

“We've got a number of both NDP and Sask Party voters who are comfortable with the current approach of the existing stores being public and then the new ones becoming private.”

Nearly half of the people polled believe that privatization will mean fewer public dollars available for health, education and highways. The other 51 per cent feel that would mean more money for those areas.

“I think that suggests that there's an opportunity for the government to communicate what it would see as the benefits going forward, to give people a little bit more information,” McGilp said.

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