I will be very succinct. Fred King used to be the member of Parliament for Okanagan—Similkameen. He probably was the member of Parliament when your family member was there. Fred King, like many of the people who got into the industry, was a farmer. He was from Kaleden. He said that at the time when NAFTA came in, everyone saw the industry as going nowhere. They could not compete with the Americans. The Mulroney government did a replant program that changed the industry. Where people saw opportunity and put in a lot of hard work, that industry made distinct changes, distinct investments, and changed everything in my area. I will say this. If we think that throwing up more challenges and roadblocks is a way to make things better for our economy, that is wrong. I would also argue for a moment that when we heard from them during the pre-budget consultations, we actually agreed that government could do more to support a thriving sector.
As has been said very poignantly by my NDP colleague as well as my Conservative colleagues, this will put the industry on the wrong footing. It's the wrong place to go. I would suggest to the member opposite that if he has met with as many wineries across this great country.... I would agree small can be beautiful, but I will say that having so many small firms try to compete and try to build economies of scale where they can compete with Australia.... There's one vintage in Australia that is larger than the Canadian wine industry as a whole—one vintage by one company in Australia. We need to have larger firms and more market share. This puts not only an anchor around the larger players.... By the way, many of them have huge investments in premium VQA wineries. That will mean less investment in those smaller wineries, but the small people, as we've heard, may be increasingly at risk to challenge. This is not the way to grow an economy, I submit.