Thank you very much.
Yes, as I mentioned, there's been significant growth as a result of the excise exemption that was put into place.
You have to understand that the excise duty takes place right after the producer's price on a bottle of wine. As that moves through the price chain, ending up all the way down to the liquor retailer, it's picking up a lot of different ad valorem taxes at the liquor retail level, such as the GST and PST, etc.
The 52¢ per bottle tax, depending on what jurisdiction you're in, will more than double. In the case of the LCBO, that 52¢ per bottle may increase the price of a bottle of wine by roughly $1.15. When you only own 30% of your market, if we pass that tax on but the imports don't, we're going to lose that consumer to imported wine. It's a significant tax that hurts every single wine producer in Canada.
We still don't have the final details of the wine support program. We worked with trade lawyers and experts from agriculture, finance and global affairs to develop a trade-legal program that allowed all wine produced in Canada from fresh fruit to benefit through a grant program based upon the litres of wine produced in Canada. It could not be concentrate or imported concentrate but had to be from fresh fruit, and it applied to both domestic and imported fresh fruit.
By putting a program like that in place, you'd allow the producers to get funding from the federal government to be able to address the investments that they need to make, as they have over the past 16 years under the excise exemption, which grew the industry significantly. That program would work 100% for every wine, cider, mead and sake producer in this country. Every apple producer and grape grower would be a significant beneficiary as a result.