Agriculture committee  Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I have just a couple of things, and then I'll get out of your way because I have to go lie on the beach.

Agriculture committee  Some good news is that the new generation of wine drinkers, the 20-somethings, have brought with them amazing responsibility with regard to alcohol. It's quite remarkable what's happening. Of course, the dark cloud that always hung over wine and liquor was that it was damaging

Agriculture committee  Actually there's an unnamed troublemaker within the wine industry—notorious. Only one name ever pops up in B.C.. I was talking to him in advance of this. He was saying that he could somewhere down the way more regulations, that we will be regulated more. We seem to be a regulatio

Agriculture committee  It's the Internet. It's now the age of the Internet and I think that is our future. We'll still have wine stores. We'll still have walk-in customers. We'll still have tasting rooms. But it's going to be the Internet that will move product across the country. By the way, we haven'

Agriculture committee  It's coming. It's coming. It's all coming our way. If we have this discussion in a year or two from now, I believe it will be a reality. Certainly, the wineries are ready to go down that road. Bottles on shelves is an old-school way of buying wine, but that's what we all do. It's

Agriculture committee  I couldn't agree with you more. If I were in the room I'd give you a hug. I used to be a Mountie, so I do understand a small modicum of what's right and wrong and the truth and how the laws work. This law was written in 1928 at the time of Prohibition. The Americans did away wit

Agriculture committee  It's fantastic. I'm heading to Edmonton on Friday and the first place I'll go is to my local wine store because, first of all, I see brands there that I would never see anywhere else. It's astonishing how robust the wine shops are in Alberta. I applaud them wholeheartedly. It's t

Agriculture committee  They won't talk about it. Even if asked directly, they won't talk about it. It's a very grey area you have touched on. Somebody will step forward at some point and actually spill the beans, but they didn't do it for my microphones. I haven't even heard comments off the record. It

Agriculture committee  I'll go back to my comment previously, which was that they have to be held accountable. The liquor boards have been beholden to nobody. Frankly, they walk around like bullies. They walk around like an enforcement police, and they are not. That's not their job. They have to be re

Agriculture committee  There is no appeal process.

Agriculture committee  That's it.

Agriculture committee  It's a scary thought when you think about it, but that is the process. For example, I was the chair for the Canadian Culinary Championships in Kelowna two years ago and I interviewed the chef representing the Maritimes, who was from St. John's, before he came. I asked him whethe

Agriculture committee  You've nailed something very succinctly, which is that they go hat in hand. They are absolutely at the disposal of the liquor control boards, and they must have these boards' approval; otherwise they're not in business. It's a delicate imbalance that has to be corrected, because

Agriculture committee  Exactly. What you can do is hope that people will notice that you're there, that they will come through the front door and you can do over-the-counter sales, but that's very tenuous. You still need the Albertans to come in and, God bless them, buy their two cases and take them ba

Agriculture committee  Thank you so much for including me in this discussion. I doubt I'll need 10 minutes. My take on this is different from all the other folks you've heard from, except for Shirley-Ann. I'm not a corporate type of person, but I do have information that I think would be of interest