International Trade committee  We have liquor boards in Canada. Those are classed as “state trading enterprises”. For those operations, there has been a history—not just in Canada, but in many places in the world—that because they're not normal commercial operations with competitors, the perception has been th

International Trade committee  I don't think I necessarily said there are going to be losers. We see this as an enhanced opportunity for us in the spirits business. We have a fundamental belief in competition. We think competition improves things. It makes things better. It focuses people on the customer. Ther

International Trade committee  We're already seeing an increase in exports. Seventy per cent of what we make in this country leaves Canada; we don't have a big enough market to support it. We have a relatively mature domestic market. People aren't drinking a lot more alcohol nor do we necessarily want them to

International Trade committee  That's the issue. If you don't have the money in your jeans at the end of the day to invest, all the trade agreements that the Government of Canada makes won't do us any good if we can't go out there and seize that opportunity.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm Jan Westcott, and this is my colleague, C.J. Helie. Before I address the topic on today's agenda, I'd like to extend our appreciation to the committee for its recommendation in its food supply chain report to address the discrimination against spirits

Agriculture committee  That's all exports.

Agriculture committee  I guess the spirits industry has been a global business for a long time. Spirits are one of the world's oldest traded commodities. In fact, most government revenue prior to the discovery of things like income tax and other forms of taxation was in fact in the form of customs duti

Agriculture committee  They can sustain travel and they hold their value. In fact, one of the reasons spirits were produced originally was that they held the farm community value in a product over long periods. I think the critical thing we would say is that Canada is doing the right thing in opening

Agriculture committee  Approximately, yes.

Agriculture committee  There's no question. All of our purchases of our inputs, particularly grains, are up fairly significantly. There's no question that in 2008, 2009, 2010, the industry flattened out. We're an export business and our big markets tended to be some of those countries that were the ab

Agriculture committee  There's no question.

Agriculture committee  It's very good. It's very high end. It leads Canada and probably North America in focusing consumers. We can't lose sight of the fact that Canada is an exporting country. At the end of the day, we're an exporting country. We don't have a big enough population to sustain the lif

Agriculture committee  In our business in Canada, our gross margins, all the money we get for every dollar of sales, is about 18¢. If I'm a Scotch whiskey producer in the United Kingdom, my gross margin is around 32%. If I'm a bourbon producer in the United States it would be around 29%. We're a glob

Agriculture committee  Every company would do different things with it. Some companies would use it to create new export markets. We are on the cusp of going into Colombia. Canada has signed a free trade agreement with Colombia. We have products that are just about to go into Colombia. That's a secre

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Jan Westcott, and I'm the president and CEO of Spirits Canada. Joining me, as the chair said, is my colleague C.J. Helie. We're pleased to share our industry's perspective on how to promote domestic trade of agricultural and agrifood products