Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for this special opportunity to sit as a guest.
To my colleague Mr. Albas I will say that it has been a pleasure working together. It's been a labour of love for the last several years.
I've had the opportunity to serve the constituents of Kelowna—Lake Country for the past six years and more. It's a pleasure to be here for more than one reason, especially given the distinguished pleasure of being with Mr. Harry McWatters, the guru of VQA wine in Canada, who may live long enough to see that this archaic piece of legislation can be revoked.
As you mentioned, Mr. Albas, the consultation we've had across the country has been fully supported from province to province by the small vintners. Especially for our home base, the Okanagan, maybe you could expand a little bit more on what this will mean for some of the agri-tourism opportunities and for helping the small vintners—by which I mean 2,000- to 3,000-case producers—potentially become clients of the liquor boards and grow to be larger Canadian producers and employ more Canadians.