Thank you for the opportunity to present the views of the Grape Growers of Ontario on, hopefully, promoting growth and reducing interprovincial barriers.
My comments today are on behalf of the Grape Growers of Ontario, which represents more than 500 growers on 17,000 acres of vineyards in three different designated viticultural areas in Ontario.
Our association works as an advocate for all processing grape growers in the province and works on their behalf to ensure their needs are met. Our vision is to see that the markets for Ontario grapes and wines expand domestically and internationally on a continuous basis. We're always working on finding new markets for our products.
Ontario-grown grape products, hopefully, in the future will be demanded at home and internationally recognized for many of the great wines we produce.
I'll give you a quick snapshot of where we are despite the cold weather. In 2013, Ontario had one of the largest grape harvests. It was recorded at over 80,000 tonnes. Our farm gate, just at the farm level, was $100 million. Ninety-six per cent of the grapes grown in Ontario are vinifera and hybrid wine grapes. However, due to the extreme cold last year, our grape harvest was much smaller at about 52,000 tonnes and valued at just over $62 million.
From our perspective, we know that grape growers in Ontario have a collective legacy of about $684 million of investment in the land, which contributes to the community's landscape. Obviously, that intrinsic value dividend can't really be measured, but we know the economic value of the wine regions in this country would not exist without our growers.
In 2013, Ontario grape growers contributed over $100 million directly and indirectly to Ontario's gross domestic product. As for labour income, over $40 million was paid to labour related to grape growing in the province.
What we know is, and I'm sure you've heard this already from CVA, that 60% of the wines sold in Canada are imported. The other 30% is comprised of 100% VQA and what we call international-Canadian blend wine, which is made up of domestic and, in part, imported bulk product. Canada has to own 50% of its market share in the future, which is considerably low even compared to other competing international wine regions which hold shares upwards of 70% in their domestic market. Australia is 90%. California is 63%. New Zealand is 57%.
A 2012 report that CVA produced also talks about how countries like Australia, the United States, New Zealand, France, and Italy are financially supported by their national and regional governments for both export and domestic markets to encourage wine sales. Grape growers in this country should not have to compete with the treasuries of foreign countries.
In 2013, Ontario's wineries brought home over 214 medals from international competitions. We have an excellent reputation. I think most people know that. The problem is we're not buying our wine in Canada; we're buying wine from other countries, and that is a huge concern.
It should not be easier to ship from a winery in Ontario to Memphis in the United States than it is to Montreal. Market access in Canada is one of the main impediments to domestic growth.
I need to pause here.
We did not agree explicitly with Bill C-311, because we had hoped that would have applied only to Canadian wines to be able to travel freely among the provinces. We have accepted the fact that Canadians themselves are not buying a lot of Canadian wine. We know wine consumption in Canada has increased 30% over the last five years; therefore, it's not surprising that Canada was the sixth largest importer of wine in 2014. We know that exporters have prioritized Canada's competitive pricing growth and prospects as a great target market.
We know that in 2014 alone, total importation of table wine into Canada increased by 3.9% to 291 million litres. We know that Canada's national grape and wine industry is fragmented and faces numerous challenges, including the current legislation, but we're not happy with the fact that Bill C-311 did not apply to domestic. We thought that was a good place to start and we had hoped the liquor boards would have bought into that concept. However, the bill has passed and now also applies to foreign wine to be able to travel freely among the provinces.
Vinexpo recently released its 12th study of the world wine and spirits market with an outlook into 2018, and quite frankly, if you're a wine exporter, particularly to Canada, you have a lot to celebrate. As I have already stated, this is not good news for Canadian wineries.
We think that we need to do a couple of things. We know the industry contributes $6.8 billion in total economic impact to the country. That has been proven over and over again, and I don't think I need to repeat these statistics. I've appeared before the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food many times and talked about the economic value of a bottle of wine that is grown in Canada compared to a bottle of wine imported into Canada. We believe we have a great opportunity to grow, but we need Canadians to understand that there is an opportunity to buy Canadian wine.
The Canadian Vintners Association, in a 2013 presentation to this committee, noted that for every $1 million increase in Canadian wine sales, it leads to a $3.1 million increase in gross output: revenues, taxes, jobs, and wages—the value chain. It's a good investment for our economy.
With regard to Canada's domestic grape and wine industry, our industry alone generates $1.2 billion nationally in tax revenue and markups across the wine-growing provinces. We need a reinvestment of some of these moneys into the domestic market across Canada to build an awareness of Canadian wine.
We certainly support the idea that every wine region in the world has support from its home market first. Our country would benefit from policies that promote Canadian-grown wine, everything from putting wine on our national airlines, to promotion through any events that the Canadian tourism associations hold. It's pretty basic stuff. We need long-term, dedicated market funding from the federal government, hopefully to support marketing initiatives that grow the domestic market for Canadian products.
The Grape Growers of Ontario are fully in support of reducing interprovincial trade barriers and retaining the role of the provincial liquor boards. We want to see, though, that support 100% Canadian-grown wine. We think that is important for everybody across Canada. But we need the federal government's support to expand cultivation and the use of Canadian wine grapes through marketing initiatives. We need the government to help us build consumer demand at home. If we had just another 2% of consumer demand at home, we would certainly have a continuing growing region in Ontario, B.C., Quebec, and Nova Scotia. We think that's the best value for our wineries and our grape growers.
We want to build on that consumer awareness, and we want to build our domestic market, which is dismal, at 30%, to at least 50%.
I look forward to any of your questions. Thank you.