Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate your giving clarity on that. I would hate to have gone through a procedural rabbit hole to discuss the admissibility rather than actually talking about the substance of the motion.
I'd like to thank MP Ste-Marie for bringing this forward.
Look, I'm no fan of how the government absolutely botched the WTO challenge and capitulated to Australia, but they did. The only thing is that they didn't properly look at the law, and now it's the members of Parliament who have to hear from witnesses on the cider industry. The association for Canada, the provincial one for Quebec, the honey mead producers—all of them came in and said they are stuck under the same banner as wine.
I will tell you, Mr. Chair, that the economics of the cider industry and the mead industry, as was put out by those associations, are incredibly different. Unfortunately, by lumping them into the same regime as wine, the government has set up those respective industries for failure, much as they have with the Canadian wine sector. The wine sector has challenges with it. They understand what the government gave up. They are still hoping that the government will be good on its word to make it whole. It's something that is yet to be seen.
Let's stop damaging our growing industries. The cider industry utilizes local product. The same goes for the mead producers. Let's allow them to grow. Those mead producers, as you might remember—we had the mead association from Quebec—said they are not at the same scale as a brewery or a winery. They are very small-scale productions. Costs are high. Adding excise would be extremely damaging. Ditto for the cider industry, one that has been showing some promise. Again, I would just hate to see us starting to rely on American product to make up for the fact that the Canadian tax regime, the excise tax increases here, would force them to use cheaper products that often are not from this country.
If we really want to support farmers, if we really want to support the value-added sector, whether it be mead or cideries, let's support this amendment. Let's try to undo some of the potential damage that could and most likely will happen if this amendment does not pass. I would ask all honourable members to just vote in favour of this. It's not going to be a tremendous amount on the government. When that industry is maybe a little bit bigger, the government should probably start paying attention to them, but at this point, let's just do no harm.