New law on wine is flawed
Until recently, it was illegal for residents of any province to order wine from a winery in a different province and have it shipped to them.
This ban reflected a 1928 federal law on interprovincial alcohol commerce, and on provincial restrictions on the importation of alcohol.
But last year, Parliament passed a law (C-311) enabling individuals to order out-ofprovince wine for personal consumption.
The catch: each province needed to permit wine to be imported this way. To date, only British Columbia and Manitoba have explicitly done so, thus enabling their residents to order out-of-province wine directly.
Why is Ontario’s government reluctant? Maybe because the flow of wine is likely to be largely one-way — from British Columbia to Ontario.
There’s a lot of interest in B.C. wine among Ontario wine-lovers, but I’m told (by the leading B.C. wine writer) that there’s not much interest in Ontario wine in B.C.
Not only that, but creating a national market in Canadian wine would benefit British Columbia more than Ontario. B.C. would gain a market of 30 million, while Ontario would gain 21 million — and that includes Quebec, where many people already buy wine — including Ontario wine — from the LCBO. (It’s not surprising that C-311 was a private member’s bill, sponsored by an MP from Okanagan Valley.)
If it were possible for Ontarians to buy wine directly from, say, British Columbia wineries, it’s not clear what it would replace.
Assuming buyers didn’t increase their overall wine consumption, each case shipped from B.C. would be a case not purchased in Ontario. Would that mean a reduction in sales of Ontario wine or foreign wine, or both?
It’s hardly surprising that a government concerned with balancing the budget is wary of a policy that would decrease taxes and other revenue from wine sales by an unpredictable amount.
There are, then, practical reasons why Ontario might be reluctant to participate in a freer market for Canadian wine
However, my concern is not that Ontario doesn’t allow residents to order wine out of province, but that C-311 is so restrictive. It applies only to wine, and not to Canadian beer and spirits. Why shouldn’t Ontarians be able to order beer from microbreweries in Newfoundland and spirits from micro-distilleries in Quebec?
C-311 is a faulty law. It goes just far enough to dampen whatever consumer discontent exists. And its existence ensures that a much-needed coherent, national policy on the alcohol trade is delayed for a few more decades.