The Act Respecting Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs adds a new section to New Brunswick’s Liquor Control Act that defines “gang,” “associate of a gang,” and “unlawful behaviour,” and gives peace officers the power to demand that a person they reasonably believe is a gang member or associate leave licensed premises. The bill also allows officers to require photographic ID, creates a specific provincial offence for failing to comply with such a demand, and mandates a higher minimum fine for convictions under that offence.
Separately, the government rewrites licensee obligations in the Liquor Control Regulation to restate and expand prohibited conduct in licensed premises and amends the schedules of provincial-offence regulations so those new offences and rule changes are enforceable. For compliance officers, licensees, and legal counsel, the Act reallocates responsibilities: police gain a clearly-stated removal power while licensees face reinforced duties and new regulatory citations tied to gang-related presence or activity in their venues.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill inserts section 136.1 into the Liquor Control Act, defining gang-related terms and authorizing peace officers who have reasonable grounds to believe a person is a gang member or associate to demand they leave licensed premises and to eject them if they refuse; it also permits officers to demand photo ID. It doubles the minimum fine for convictions under the new offence and updates liquor-regulation conduct rules and provincial-offence schedules accordingly.
Who It Affects
Licensed establishments (bars, clubs, restaurants with liquor licences), peace officers operating on those premises, patrons who associate with outlaw motorcycle gangs, and municipal/regulatory enforcement systems that process provincial-offence charges.
Why It Matters
The statute converts crowd-management and safety concerns about organized-gang presence into explicit statutory powers and offences, creating clearer enforcement routes but also exposing licensees and patrons to new regulatory and criminal-process consequences tied to subjective policing judgments.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The Act creates a statutory definition of a “gang” and its “associate” tied to a pattern of unlawful behaviour or creating an atmosphere of fear. Crucially, “unlawful behaviour” is defined broadly to include drug trafficking, organized procurement or receipt of sexual services for consideration, illegal firearms activity, and violence or intimidation.
Those definitions are the gateway: they set the conduct that will trigger the removal power and related provincial offences.
Under the new section, a peace officer who has reasonable grounds to believe someone in a licensed premises is a gang member or associate may demand the person leave; if the person refuses, they commit a provincial offence and the officer may physically eject them. The statute tells officers what factors to consider when forming reasonable grounds: presence during unlawful conduct, an admission of membership, use of identifying insignia, receipt of benefits, and frequent association with known members.
The officer may also require production of a photographic ID to verify identity.On the regulatory side the bill replaces the existing section governing disorderly conduct in licensed premises with a reorganized provision that restates prohibitions against intoxication, disorderly behaviour, and unlawful activity, and clarifies the licensee’s duty not to permit activities harmful to safety or contrary to licence conditions. The provincial-offences schedules are adjusted so that failure to comply with a peace officer’s demand to leave appears as a listed offence tied to the Liquor Control Act, and the Act mandates that the minimum fine for that offence be twice the statutory minimum for its category under the Provincial Offences Procedure Act.Taken together, the Act centralizes a three-part enforcement scheme: (1) statutory definitions that frame what counts as gang-related, (2) police powers to remove and cite, and (3) regulatory reinforcement via liquor-licence obligations and provincial-offences listings.
That scheme shifts more on-the-floor decisions to law enforcement and places a compliance burden on licensees to avoid running premises where gang presence or related unlawful behaviour occurs.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Section 136.1 of the Liquor Control Act defines “gang” and “associate of a gang” and enumerates “unlawful behaviour” to include drug trafficking, procuring or receiving material benefits from sexual services, illegal firearms transfers, and violence or intimidation.
A peace officer with reasonable grounds may demand that a suspected gang member or associate leave a licensed premises and may eject the person if they refuse; refusal is a newly listed provincial offence.
The statute authorizes officers to require a person in a licensed premises to produce a photographic identification document for the purposes of the demand and potential charge.
If convicted under the new subsection for failing to comply with a removal demand, the minimum fine is set at double the standard minimum for that category of provincial offence under the Provincial Offences Procedure Act.
The Liquor Control Regulation’s conduct rules are rewritten to clarify licensee duties (no disorderly, intoxicated or unlawful activity) and the provincial-offences schedules are amended so licensees and patrons can be ticketed under the revised regulatory scheme.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Definitions and police removal power for licensed premises
This new section gives statutory definitions for “gang,” “associate of a gang,” and “unlawful behaviour,” and makes those definitions the trigger for enforcement inside licensed premises. The practical effect is to turn a previously informal policing practice into an express statutory power: peace officers can require suspected members or associates to leave on reasonable grounds and may eject them where necessary. The subsection lists non-exhaustive factors officers should consider when forming reasonable grounds (presence during unlawful conduct, admissions, insignia, benefits, and frequent association), which will guide training, evidence collection, and later review in court or regulatory hearings.
ID production at the scene
This short but consequential clause permits a peace officer to demand photographic identification from any person in a licensed premises for the purposes of the removal power. That authorization narrows previous ambiguity about whether officers could request ID during such interactions and creates a routine evidentiary step: identification can support charges for failing to comply and make prosecutions administratively simpler, but it also raises procedural questions about verification, retention of ID, and privacy safeguards.
Creating an express provincial offence for failure to comply
The bill inserts a specific schedule entry that makes failure to obey a peace officer’s removal demand a provincial offence under the Liquor Control Act. By listing the offence in Schedule A, the legislature ensures ticketing and provincial-offence procedures apply, rather than leaving enforcement solely to criminal channels. This creates a lower-threshold enforcement path for the province but also means these incidents will feed into administrative records and fines rather than necessarily triggering criminal prosecutions.
Revised licensee duties on disorderly, unlawful or unsafe activity
The regulation rewrite clarifies and consolidates licensee responsibilities: no tolerance for disorderly, boisterous, or intoxicated persons; prohibition on profane language in certain contexts; and a clear ban on any activity that is illegal, detrimental to operations, or that endangers health or safety. The change gives liquor-licence inspectors and courts a cleaner regulatory standard to cite against licensees whose premises become sites of gang-related activity, and it exposes licensees to more straightforward regulatory enforcement when patrons’ behaviour touches the listed categories.
Provincial-offence schedule entries and expanded offence list
This amendment adds the new failure-to-comply entry to the provincial-offence schedule for the Liquor Control Act and adjusts other entries to reflect changes in the liquor regulation (including providing liquor to someone apparently intoxicated). By aligning the schedules, the government makes the removal power and regulatory obligations operationally enforceable through ticketing, summonses and fine collection processes overseen under provincial-offence rules.
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Explore this topic in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Patrons seeking safer spaces — the law gives peace officers and inspectors a clearer tool to remove people suspected of creating fear or engaging in gang-related unlawful behaviour, which can reduce on-premises violence and intimidation.
- Peace officers and municipal enforcement agencies — the Act provides an explicit statutory basis for removal and ID demands that reduces ambiguity during on-site crowd-control decisions and supports administrative prosecutions.
- Licensees who proactively manage safety — venues that implement robust policies can point to the regulatory framework to justify ejecting problematic patrons and to seek enforcement support rather than handling difficult removals themselves.
Who Bears the Cost
- Licensed establishments — they face heightened compliance expectations, potential regulatory citations if gang-related activity occurs on premises, and the practical burdens of training staff, documenting incidents, and cooperating with police to avoid penalties.
- Patrons who associate with known gang members — they risk on-the-spot ejection, a provincial offence charge for refusing to leave, and a doubled minimum fine if convicted, even where criminal charges do not follow.
- Peace officers and courts — police will need training and protocols to apply the “reasonable grounds” factors consistently, and provincial courts or tribunals may see an increase in summary provincial-offence files and contested ejection cases.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between giving police and regulators clear tools to remove and deter gang-related presence in licensed premises (a public-safety aim) and avoiding overbroad, subjective enforcement that can infringe on individuals’ freedom of association, lead to profiling, and shift enforcement costs onto private businesses without detailed procedural protections.
The Act rests on one broad, interpretive linchpin: whether an officer has “reasonable grounds” that a person is a gang member or associate. The statute lists helpful indicia, but those factors are inherently fact-sensitive and leave significant room for judgement calls on the scene.
That ambiguity creates predictable implementation challenges: officers will need clear protocols and documentation standards to avoid arbitrary decisions or successful legal challenges, and licensees will need guidance on when to cooperate or contest removal decisions to balance safety with liability.
Another trade-off concerns the shift of enforcement burden toward provincial regulatory and administrative routes. Making refusal to leave a provincial offence simplifies processing but also channels disputes into a system with different procedural safeguards than criminal court.
The doubled minimum fine raises stakes for alleged offenders, potentially producing inequitable outcomes where factual disputes about association or presence at an incident exist. Finally, the ID-production authorization and the coupling of licence obligations to gang-presence risk generating profiling concerns and privacy questions; the law provides limited procedural guardrails on how officers must handle identity information or how licensees are expected to act absent immediate danger.
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