Drinking alcohol in designated Vancouver parks allowed for another year

Visitors to 22 of Vancouver’s parks will be allowed to continue consuming alcohol in designated areas for another year, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation confirms.

Board commissioners voted Monday night to extend the popular Alcohol in Parks Pilot into 2022, taking into consideration some of the lessons learned in 2021.

“Not everybody necessarily is going to have a beer or wine with them and they want might want to get something cold from a concession, so I’d like to see that as part of this next pilot,” said John Coupar, a commissioner of the Non-Partisan Association party, in an interview with the Jill Bennett Show on CKNW.

“It’s also a source of revenue for the park board.”

Commissioners have asked city staff to report back to the board with next steps.

The decision comes more than three years after the Vancouver Park Board first studied the possibility of permitting alcohol consumption in select park sites.

Twenty-two parks were approved for the pilot program in July 2020, and in June 2021, the provincial government amended its Liquor Control and Licensing Act to allow the pilot to proceed under the legal authority of the park board.

The program launched the follow month, and wrapped up in October that year, with staff reviewing data and presenting feedback last December.

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In that report, neither the Vancouver Police Department nor Vancouver Coastal Health reported a significant or notable increase in alcohol-related incidents during the pilot program.

“Our park rangers reported that in 94 per cent of visits, everybody was respectful,” said Coupar.

“From the general survey we learned that about 86 per cent of the people that participated in the survey were supportive of drinking in parks.”

Some concerns were lodged in those surveys about the possibility of increase littering, and city staff later identified recycling and waste management as an opportunity for improvement next time around.

On-site monitoring and enforcement, and clarity on the boundaries of the pilot sites were also identified as challenges of the pilot program in 2021.

Coupar said a new pilot in 2022 will take these recommendations into consideration, and he hopes the program will began in early summer or late spring.