Province walking back wine pricing policy
Farm wineries pleased with March 19 decision
The provincial government announced last week that a contentious policy on support for part of the wine industry has been paused.
“We don’t always get it right, and when we don’t, we try to fix it,” Premier Tim Houston said in the legislature on March 19. “We’ll get the right path forward, I’m confident in that.”
The Progressive Conservative government had been under fire for a few weeks when it came to light that the two wineries in the province with commercial licenses would be enriched under the new policy.
Farm wineries said at the time the result of the policy would be “catastrophic” to them.
Describing his government as “big fans and supporters of the industry,” Houston described a “productive” a meeting with wine industry representatives on Monday evening, March 17, and another on Tuesday.
Opposition leader Zach Churchill accused the premier of refusing to meet with farm wineries until the pressure on him to do so got too intense.
He called the announced policy pause a “ploy to end headlines,” and asked the premier to end special supports for commercial wineries, not just a pause.
“What happened is very obvious, the premier got caught doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons,” Churchill said.
A large contingent from the province’s wine industry sat in the legislature gallery on Tuesday.
“We had what I would call a positive meeting (Monday) night, to which we sent our chair, vice-chair and the president of Grape Growers to meet with the province,” said Ashley McConnell-Gordon, co-owner of Benjamin Bridge winery. “That was the start of open dialogue, so our hope was to hear something like that today, but we didn’t have notice of that until the premier spoke.”
Karl Coutinho, president at Avondale Sky Winery and chair of the board for Wine Growers Nova Scotia, attended both meetings with the province and described the tone as positive.
“The premier and the government understand that everyone makes mistakes,” he said. “I think they made the decision around the commercial wine support program looking through a silo as helping one area, not realizing how many other areas, including our industry and tourism and hospitality in rural Nova Scotia that they were impacting.”
Mike Lightfoot, co-owner of Lightfoot and Wolfville Winery, commended the government for showing open-mindedness and said he is looking forward to a collaboration with the province on the issue.
“The devil’s in the details and we’re just finally getting to a place where we should have been months and months ago,” said Lightfoot. “We’re at the start line again and I know the government is committed to a quick, intense collaborative path forward, and we’re hopeful we can get there. I’m trepidatious right now, but optimistic, cautiously.”
Finance Minister Allan MacMaster told the house there is a deadline of the end of June to have a pricing system in place that is tradecompliant.
A release issued on behalf of Wine Growers Nova Scotia and the Grape Growers Association of Nova Scotia said, “We will continue to assert that farm wineries make substantial investments in our local communities with significant economic impacts and are focused on how to nurture and expand our locally grown industry that already draws tens of thousands of tourists annually, into a $500-million industry, elevating Nova Scotia and attracting even more attention.”