Mr. Chair, I appreciate the clarification. I will keep it rather succinct.
In my work as a member of Parliament previous to this 42nd Parliament, I had a chance to engage with people involved in the beer- and wine-producing industries. My area is a wine-producing region. I'm proud to say that today it is also a beer-producing region, with microbreweries opening in Kelowna, West Kelowna, and Summerland.
Mr. Chair, I think the challenge is that there are certain producers who will just decide not to grow or will decide to let go of certain staff to offset the cost increase that will happen here so they can maintain competitiveness. You also have the people who have entered into this industry in good faith under a business plan. Their markups provincially are very high. Again, they are not just paying GST and income tax and corporate income tax. They are also paying provincial markups as well as licensing fees, etc. These kinds of year-over-year excise taxes, when you add the GST on top of those, will make the industry less competitive.
For example, there's one large-scale producer that produces in both Canada and the United States. They have a 105,000 hectolitre deficit. There's more demand in Canada than not, and if you do not.... You know, they could go either way.
If we are adding costs that make them less competitive, they will go to where they, first of all, can sell much more easily, places like the United States where they don't have the same kind of interprovincial trade laws. For those that are just not big enough to have that choice, they will let jobs go. They will choose not to replace equipment.
Again, as I said to the minister, we're at the lowest levels of business investment since 1981. A year-over-year escalator is not in anyone's interest, not just for the industry, but I would say for the taxpayer. I think, year over year, you'll see a reduction in investment, as well as a reduction in jobs, and a reduction in the taxes from lower levels of production.
Thank you.