The term ‘rocket fuel’, when applied to booze, has taken on a new significance in Nova Scotia. Booze theft is skyrocketing. Police there recently raided a house in Dartmouth, NS, and seized stolen spirits worth more than $20,000…
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You thought food theft from grocery stores was getting crazy. How about this tale of thievery from the Maritimes? Police say they’ve never seen anything like it before…
Same M.O.
It’s the same modus operandi (MO) as the ‘foodlifting’ plague that’s triggered the lockdown of super-markets across North America. ‘Grab-and-run’ boozelifters are stuffing liquor bottles down their pants, into secret coat pockets – wherever they can fit them. And just walking out of the stores…
“What we are typically seeing are more high-impact thefts, where an individual comes into our store and grabs many products at one time and then walks out,” says Nova Scotia Liquor Commission spokesperson Terah McKinnon.
“The NSLC even closed its Scotia Square location in downtown Halifax in late February,” CBC report-ed. “Partly because theft incidents there surged more than 160 per cent between April 1, 2025, and Jan. 31, 2026, compared to the same period a year before. Provincewide, the number of incidents was up 15 per cent.”
Cracking down
The NSLC has, of course instituted anti-theft programs. Buy they have not, so far, deterred booze-lifters. But law enforcement is having some success busting the crooks, literally where they live.
A two-month investigation into alcohol thefts in the Halifax region resulted in a raid just before Christmas last year. The RCMP seized more than 450 bottles of hard alcohol worth almost $20,000 from a home in nearby Dartmouth. They also found a ledger detailing the alcohol being delivered to the home and what had been resold.
“I’ve never seen it to this scale,” said Sgt. Serge Landry, a 21-year veteran on the force. The most ‘popular’ item stolen was Smirnoff Vodka, he added.
Not just the East Coast
The increase in liquor store thefts since the start of the COVID crisis is reflected all across Canada, particularly in Ontario. One black-market booze trafficking operation busted in the Greater Toronto Area involved more than $1.3 million in stolen liquor.
‘Grab-and-run’ thefts led to over $9 billion in total nation-wide retail losses in 2024. Authorities are combatting this scourge with increased surveillance, enhanced security, and longer prison sentences for thieves.
My take
Liquor store theft is just another consequence of folks having less buying power, and prices for everything increasing sharply since the dawn of the 2020s.
And it’s just a small part of the bigger picture, where millions of Canadians can’t afford adequate food, the Food Banks are unable to properly serve the increasing demand, and supermarket chains are still racking up record, double-digit profits year over year.
Provincial governments rake in billions of dollars in profits each year from alcohol sales. Now, the affordability crisis is hitting them in their own pocket books, so to speak. Perhaps that will spur them to take official action reining in unrelenting, soaring prices.
~ Maggie J.