Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My name is Hillary Dawson. I'm president of the Wine Council of Ontario. I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak here today on behalf of our over 86 winery members from across this province. Our members are small and medium-sized enterprises. They are grape growers, manufacturers, leaders in tourism, and they drive economic development in their rural communities.
As you can imagine, the grape and wine industry has some unique perspectives on various issues and challenges facing our sector. We know that with the right policies and encouragement we can continue to grow our contribution to the Canadian economy.
According to a 2012 report prepared for the Bank of Montreal, Canada's wine industry has experienced 3.1% growth in sales on average since 2005. Canada is one of the fastest growing wine retail markets in the world, with per capita wine consumption increasing by more than 37% over the past seven years. Now our policies need to keep pace with our growth, which is outpacing that of the economy broadly across the country, and our ambition as wineries to own and to eventually dominate our markets here in Ontario and across Canada. For that, a shift in approach and a reinforcement of current activities will go a long way to support our industry across the value chain, from grower to winery to retailer.
There is a significant role for the federal government to play in assisting our grape and wine industry to grow and thrive. First is to focus on our international credibility through practising what we preach. This can include ensuring that our national air carrier supports domestic wines by policy, or it can mean that our labelling requirements for our wines are in line with international best practices. We can focus on promoting our wine at our posts abroad. Cuts have come to our Canadian wine initiative program, which industry has been asked to cover, with DFAIT eliminating its support for shipping Canadian beer, wine, and spirits to our posts overseas. We're concerned that this will be a disincentive to our posts serving Canadian VQA wines at their events abroad.
We want to also focus our efforts on ensuring that funding is restored to support the efforts of industry to support its reputation abroad and our export efforts. The committee would be interested to know that the amount of funding from DFAIT to our embassies and consulates to support our industry's efforts abroad has declined to only $27,000 per year. To give this context, the posts themselves submitted over $125,000 in projects and are disappointed when their projects are not supported in the market.
We also want to focus on helping wineries extend their market across Canada through either encouraging direct-to-consumer delivery from coast to coast, or in supporting our efforts to build markets in every provincial liquor board and market across Canada. One of the reasons that my member wineries have a strong interest relates to the challenges of our marketplace. You might be interested to know that wineries in Ontario only have the following sales outlets for their wines. First is sales through the LCBO. The LCBO is the sole avenue for mass distribution of wines in Ontario. It has two lines of business. LCBO Wines sells larger volumes at lower price points, and Vintages is the key vehicle for sales of premium-priced wines. Though the LCBO is an excellent retail partner and a big supporter of VQA wine sales, our wineries remain challenged by the lack of opportunities to connect with the consumer at the premium price point.
Another important channel is sales to provinces through other liquor boards. The wine council and its winery members have been actively engaging interested liquor boards across Canada to grow the presence of our wines on their shelves. Channels like the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission, Newfoundland Labrador Liquor Corporation, and coming up, the P.E.I. Liquor Control Commission, have or will be partnering with the industry to create promotions for VQA wine, which have led to sustained listings in those markets.
It should be noted that these opportunities work best when there are market conditions for both winery and retailer that drive positive results. Not all provinces are interested in developing this market in this way, but the industry has been active in engaging as many as make sense and will continue to do so in order to ensure a strong presence of 100% Canadian wines for Canadian consumers.