First of all, it's not unique that tobacco country has gone to wine. The same thing happened in southwestern Ontario. A significant amount of farmland has turned over to wine. One of the challenges in that regard is under the current Income Tax Act. If you shift from a Chardonnay to a Merlot, you can write off all of your costs to transfer, but if you're shifting from tobacco, cherries, or peaches into a different agricultural product, you're not allowed to write off any of your additional cost to move to a new, higher value-added viable product, which is a challenge internally.
In terms of the Canada-EU agreement, I don't see that there's going to be any significant impact in terms of competitiveness. We compete right now with some of the best in the world. The Europeans already have 50% of our market. Taking 2¢ to 5¢ off in tariff per litre won't amount to a significant amount. The fact that we are producing a high-quality international product such as you have identified is what it takes to survive.
What we do need is some type of support, like the Europeans provide to their industry, in terms of domestic promotion, to be able to promote our products within Canada. For the first time this year, Growing Forward 2 has provided that type of funding. That's something we have to take greater advantage of, and hopefully, more funding will be available to be able to compete with the products that will be entering into Canada.
There are great opportunities for this country. We only own 30% of our market. Any wine-producing market around the world owns 90%, 95%, or even 99% of its market. There are significant opportunities here. A little bit of support to be able to capture the domestic market would help us grow our competitiveness and enable us to launch into the export market. For those smaller companies, the 50 or so companies I mentioned already, the reduction in tariffs in Europe will definitely help them enter into that marketplace.
Thank you.