licences. Our immediate concern comes about because of recent hearings for licences at the Enterprise Grocery in Bailey's Bay and the Hillview Variety Store at Devil's Hole.

We think that a liquor licence is a public service and should be considered in the light of just that, serving the public. If the public in an area is already adequately served in terms of the availability of liquor, then there is no need for further licences.

Liquor licences for grocery stores were designed for people who wanted to buy bottles of liquor or wine or beer along with their groceries for consumption at home, in private with their family or friends, and not in vehicles or along the streets. Liquor licences in grocery stores were not designed for public consumption of alcohol. They certainly were not designed to provide the public with an alternative to a bar.

We do not believe that the liquor licences were ever intended to include cold bottles of beer and wine and miniatures of liquor sold individually from chill boxes. With the use of chill boxes, grocery stores now serve not as package liquor stores, which we think was the intent of a licence, but as substitutes for bars. There is a huge difference. You cannot remove drinks from the licensed area of a bar but you can take what are in effect individual drinks away from a grocery store and consume them in public. That was not and should not be the intention of a grocery liquor licence.

Today's licensed grocery stores serve a wide variety of beer, wine and liquor cold from the chill boxes. They also serve over the counter miniatures of spirits ready to be mixed with cold minerals. Some stores even provide set-ups of cups and ice in which to mix the spirits and the minerals and, in our view, that is bar keeping.

All of the grocery stores will mask a cold bottle in a brown paper bag to make it easier to consume, illegally, in or on a vehicle. Most of these bottles and bags wind up as unsightly litter along our streets and by-ways.

However many of these drinks are also consumed on the walls and in the bushes near the licensed grocery thereby causing litter, crime, vandalism and other general disruption of the neighbourhood. We all know of areas where this has happened and we all know of the destructive results. We think that alcohol should be dispensed with a conscience and destroying neighbourhoods is not beneficial. We must consider the general good before we grant licences.

We think that when an area of the Country is adequately serviced so that people are not deprived of being able to take home liquor with their groceries then there are sufficient licences.

We must learn to give primary consideration to the impact of a licence on a neighbourhood rather than to the people who want to make a few dollars and who think they have a right to a licence no matter how much that licence upsets a neighbourhood.

It is interesting to us that applicants no longer argue the need for a licence in an area and even argue that a licence should be granted on a "let's see'' basis because problems arising can be dealt with later. The truth is that there is no need for more grocery store licences, or for more neighbourhood problems. Ruining neighbourhoods is not a service to the public.