“Conservative” MP Dan Albas would have you believe that striking down an arcane law that no one followed will create more jobs in Canada’s wine industry.
But do you know any tourists who didn’t take B.C. wine back to their home province because of Canada’s 1928 law prohibiting the transportation of liquor over provincial borders? Do you know of any wineries in B.C. that didn’t sell wine to visitors because of this law? Yeah… neither do I.
Of course, Mr. Albas doesn’t know any either, which is why he’s pretending there’s going to be a sudden increase in Internet wine sales across the land.
Are you planning to start buying more wine? Why would you? It’s not as though Albas made wine any cheaper.
Our nanny state still forces us to pay ridiculously high “sin” taxes on wine and other intoxicating liquors. These sin taxes are levied provincially and Mr. Albas is a federal MP. But the measure of success or failure of Albas’s private member’s bill now rests entirely, by Albas’s own admittance, on whether or not the provinces will play along with what he calls “the spirit” of his bill.
This leaves Mr. Albas, begging provincial officials to see things his way. While chatting with these officials, why not raise the issue of reducing the outrageous amount of “sin” tax we pay on liquor?
Everyone knows it’s the only way we’re going to get more jobs in the wine industry.
There’s also the outstanding issue of processed foods which remain easier to import from the U.S. than to transport across provincial borders.
I know many people working in B.C.’s wine industry, and they all say the same thing: “Reduce our taxes!” And shouldn’t a politician who claims to be a conservative at least try to do that?
Mischa Popoff