Premiers address alcohol transport limits
Agree to reduce barriers to imports but short on details
ST. ANDREWS, N.B. — Canada’s premiers have agreed in principle to reduce barriers limiting the amount of alcohol that can move across provincial and territorial borders, but failed to produce clear timelines or details around personal limits.
New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant said provinces are willing to increase import limits, although some want to consult with the public to determine how it will be done.
“Make no mistake about it, there is an acknowledgment that we have to look at this issue,” he said at the close of two days of meetings in the seaside community of St. Andrews, N.B. “There’s an acknowledgment that there should be pushes to have significant increases to import limits.”
Gallant hinted that a full deal was close, but that some provinces were reluctant. He wouldn’t name those provinces.
In many cases, he said, any potential move on alcohol would also involve changing existing legislation.
“We have all committed to take action over the next weeks and months,” Gallant said at the closing news conference. “That’s where we landed on the consensus.”
Eight premiers met for breakfast Friday to discuss universal pharmacare with former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins, who chairs the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare.
Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, was also in the meeting and said she is encouraged there is support from the provinces after they came out last year in favour of a national plan.
Hoskins, who quit his cabinet post in February to take on the federal appointment, said it’s still early days as the advisory council carries out consultations across the country.
The parliamentary budget office has pegged the total cost of pharmacare in Canada at about $20 billion and said about $4 billion in cost savings could be realized with a national plan.
In their final communiqué, the premiers emphasized that a successful pharmacare program would require “adequate and sustained federal funding” and that the participation of the provinces “must be voluntary.”