I often scratch my head when the NDP speak, but not on this one. In this case, I'm scratching my head because here we have a government that claims it was voted in on an economic platform, to grow the economy, to make it more inclusive growth, so to speak. You have many areas, such as in Nova Scotia, in Ontario, in Quebec.... There's a lot of investment that has gone on to improve wine quality and to attract tourism. Even our committee, Mr. Chair, suggested in our pre-budget reports to the Minister of Finance that the government look at ways to assist wineries to grow and build on the international brand Canada has.
Unfortunately, it does seem that the government did not necessarily take that advice. Maybe we should take that in mind, and make recommendations not to do things, so that they'll at least protect them from further things.
I just want to say how disappointing it is to see that where we have an industry that has had proven growth, the government has chosen to add.... This is, in addition to provincial markups, which continue to go up. This is the wrong direction, I believe, for the industry.
We all like to say that we love Canadian wine and we want to see the industry succeed, yet here today we're putting that at risk by adding costs, in addition to a carbon tax, in addition to payroll taxes, in addition to not allowing the small business tax rate to continue to lower.
I think we're going in the wrong direction, and it's going to hit the government coffers eventually, particularly when wineries just decide it's not worth it to grow, and they'll just stay small. We have far too many small wineries in this country. We have only a very few medium size and a very limited number of large ones that can compete with the likes of those in Australia and the United States.
This will throw a wrench in the works and make it much more difficult for that industry to grow and be able to start to build that market share.