Evidence of meeting #72 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was industry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Francine Raynault NDP Joliette, QC
So a considerable level of public awareness is needed.
Let's move on to wine. In your brief, you said that Chile owns 100% of its domestic market, that Australia owns 84% of its market and that the United States owns 66% of its market. What can we do in Canada to encourage more and more people to drink our wine?
Asking Air Canada to serve Canadian wine is fine, but—
President and Chief Executive Officer, Winery and Grower Alliance of Ontario
That is something we should do because it's a very concrete measure we can take. What's more, it's a matter of taking pride in Canadian products.
It's interesting how different countries have commanded their market share within their own countries even though there's presumed free trade. We certainly know that on an international basis there's a lot of agricultural subsidization, etc., in other countries and incentives in terms of their domestic industry. That's not something we focus on. We focus on being able to expose our domestic product to more and more Canadians because one of our feelings is that we have a level of quality in our products that is competitive with anyone in the world. One of the biggest challenges is to get people to try our products, as opposed to habits that have developed over the years and decades in terms of drinking foreign, imported wines.
One of the reasons that we've focused some of our commentary on the importance of a domestic marketing product is to get more and more Canadians introduced to our wine. We're absolutely convinced that if Canadians start to try our wine, we're going to start to build loyalty among them. But we have to break them of the habits that they've always had in terms of buying foreign wine. And they get used to it. Now what we want to do is give them a new opportunity to taste today's Canadian wine, and we're absolutely convinced that with that we'll build a loyal following.
Director, Winery and Grower Alliance of Ontario
Clearly, it's a matter of perception. It's historically based. Our industry generic initiatives are driven at entry-level consumers and consumers who are new from a wine consumption standpoint so that we can make a great first impression.
Many of the people, including most of you people in the room today, helped pay for some diapers around my house when you purchased and drank Baby Duck or Spumante Bambino.
Director, Winery and Grower Alliance of Ontario
At the time, those were wines made with great quality from the grapes that were available in the ground at that time. Today, that crop does not exist.
Just like the processing of fruit—there was a question on fruit—the juice grapes that were used to make those wines don't reside there anymore because there's no domestic juice business. That valuable vineyard land has now been converted into European varietals or global varietals like Chardonnay, Cabernet, Pinot Noir, and Sauvignon Blanc. These are fantastic grapes that can grow in a cool climate.
We now have to continue to expose both Ontario and the visitors who come to the winery to these wines. We have 35,000 visitors coming to the winery a year to taste wines that are made in the backyard, that are made in the plot of land behind, so that there's an actual story of the root, the vine, and the terroir working together to make a great and incredibly strong product.
This is something that takes time. It's driven by education. It's driven by the availability of great fruit. I promise you that any grape region in the world can only make great wines when they grow great fruit. For us, that links back not only to the wineries that grow all of their own fruit, but to the wineries that grow their own fruit and then work with independent farmers, independent grape growers, in terms of crop load, use of herbicides and pesticides, trellising systems, and all of their viticultural practices, so that the optimum fruit can be available for the winemakers today, who are incredibly talented, to make great wine.
It's happening every day in the vineyard, not only in Ontario but in British Columbia, and now in Quebec and Nova Scotia to a great extent. It's done by pioneers, but it starts in the field.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thanks, Chair.
I wanted to explore a little bit more the link between the consumer, for example, and the wine industry. I'm not sure that I quite caught your comment about the bag-in-the-box in terms of wine. What was your comment on that?
Director, Winery and Grower Alliance of Ontario
Today, one of the very specific categories in wine consumption globally is the bag-in-the-box category. It is a larger size of format so that the cost per litre actually comes down. As the chairman of the VQA of Canada, I'm proud to tell you that VQA Ontario has now approved the bag-in-the-box for VQA wines—
Director, Winery and Grower Alliance of Ontario
—which we believe is a tremendous step forward.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Okay. So you're competing with whatever other bag-in-the-box wines there are.
Director, Winery and Grower Alliance of Ontario
Yes, any that would be out there.
Director, Winery and Grower Alliance of Ontario
The bag-in-the-box consumer today is in our target market because they're people who are in the early stages of their wine appreciation. The person who buys a wonderful Bordeaux or a classic big Australian isn't the person looking for a bag-in-the-box. It's somebody who's at the entry level in the category, and for us to build a first impression—
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I think what's interesting is that you're responding to consumer demand—
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
—so you're being flexible and you're being competitive and innovative. Now you have products on the shelf to compete with other products that may or may not be of Canadian origin.
Director, Winery and Grower Alliance of Ontario
I have just one other point in terms of the carbon footprint and the weight, because there are more litres in less packaging.
Conservative
Director, Winery and Grower Alliance of Ontario
Also, for a Canadian producer, the route to market is hundreds of kilometres at the outside. On the carbon footprint of the same product coming from Australia, Chile, or Argentina, for example, there's no comparison.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Right, and let me ask you this as well. There was a great private member's bill that was meant to free grapes, to allow cross-border and interprovincial trade on grapes. You mentioned tourism, so I'd like to know your views on that. What's your view on interprovincial trade of wine or, in other words, no barriers to your wine or Ontario wine moving into other provinces? Does your organization support that?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Winery and Grower Alliance of Ontario
Yes. As an organization we support it, and we're a member of the Canadian Vintners Association nationally, which obviously supports it. We think it's something that will be good for the industry.
Director, Winery and Grower Alliance of Ontario
We absolutely do support it. We know it won't necessarily grow the market share for our industry, because that's a consumer who is already an advocate. But what we hope is that when they get to their destination—if someone has purchased the wine in Ontario and is taking it back to Saskatchewan or conversely is taking it from B.C. to another place—they will say they are ready to try Canadian wines again.
The economic driver is not going to be enormous, because the total tonnage that may get consumed as a result of it is probably small, but the marketability and the ability to influence opinion are significant.
