Thank you very much for the question.
As you know, it is a huge economic driver in our province. You mentioned Niagara-on-the-Lake, near Niagara Falls, which is where I am from. The number one tourist attraction now in Niagara-on-the-Lake or Niagara Falls is no longer one of the natural wonders of the world, but the wine industry that people are touring.
We see the escalator as having two impacts. One is when it would be applied against the ICB business, which is about 50% of the sales in Ontario of domestically produced wines. It would make them uncompetitive in a highly competitive market. We face importers who flood into the country, who are subsidized by their governments, and we see very little support when you have an escalator at this level.
It waves a red flag in front of the importers who already have 70% of the market share in our province, as I said in my remarks. They would go after the subsidy or the excise exemption we have for VQA wines. If that were to happen, it would wipe out our business. In Nova Scotia, as Carl said, but in Ontario as well, we would be forced to significantly reduce employment. I'm one of the few publicly traded companies and my public market would not be able to sustain the working capital growth we need to be able to grow our business beyond where it is. It's in the public domain right now. We plan to double the size of our business over the next four to five years.