Broadcaster and former Black Hills Estate Winery owner Terry David Mulligan vowed earlier this month to go to jail if that’s what it takes to draw attention to a 1928 law forbidding anyone from travelling from one province to another with wine, beer or spirits.
The law represents a business roadblock for winery owners who want to sell to restaurants in other provinces or ship product to out-of-province tourists who have visited their wine stores.
Interprovincial trade barriers also restrict the flow of other B.C. agricultural products.
Mulligan, however, is targeting Canada’s Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act (IILA). Violators face fines of up to $200 or up to three months in jail.
Mulligan plans to break an “archaic” law by openly crossing B.C.’s border into Alberta while carrying a bottle of wine. He said he’ll then disseminate images of the stunt via social media.
Mulligan added that he knows of no one who has been charged under the IILA, although provincial liquor control boards have pointed to that law as their legal basis for harassing B.C. wineries that sell wine via the Internet.
Recently, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) threatened to penalize Mission Hill Family Estate Winery if it didn’t block out-of-province orders for wine on its website.
The Manitoba Liquor Control Commission similarly told Red Rooster Winery to stop offering out-of-province wines on its website.
“We will soon be ordering and buying wines on the Internet via our handheld mobile devices,” Mulligan told Business in Vancouver. “It’s time to correct this law and move on.”
Conservative MP for Kelowna – Lake Country, Ron Cannan, agreed. Cannan tabled a motion in November to amend the IILA to allow people to “import, send, take or transport Canadian wine into any province or territory.”
Fellow MPs had yet to vote on the motion when the current federal election was called.
Cannan told BIV he wanted to secure Parliament’s approval in principle before speaking with provincial authorities and including their input in what would be a more laissez-faire law.
“I would be astonished if there’s a politician in the southern Interior who wouldn’t support the repeal of that ridiculous law,” said John Kidder, who is the Liberal candidate in Okanagan–Coquihalla.
Even though B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan created Canada’s largest interprovincial barrier-free trade and investment market last April with the launch of the New West Partnership, interprovincial trade barriers remain.
The federal Agricultural Products Marketing Act, for example, restricts interprovincial trade in eggs and other supply-managed products.
Differences between federal and provincial meat inspection programs are another obstacle to free trade between provinces. Those differences prohibit meat products from being shipped or transported from one province to another unless they’re prepared and stored in a federally accredited facility. A provincially accredited slaughterhouse is therefore restricted to selling its products in its home province.
Some progress, however, is being made.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives argues that the presence of interprovincial trade barriers is “minuscule at most.”
And B.C.’s New West Partnership with Alberta and Saskatchewan:
- removes many trade, investment and labour mobility restrictions;
- commits the three provinces to co-operate on trade and investment missions to international markets and share foreign market intelligence;
- helps co-ordinate provincial innovation efforts to better attract investment and talent; and
- enables the three provinces to capitalize on combined buying power by jointly buying goods and services.