Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think many of you recognize that the Canadian wine industry was not believed to be able to survive after the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, but we clearly did. Industry leadership and government encouragement help us do that. Today we're a $9-billion industry, supporting 37,000 jobs. Canada is the second fastest growing wine market in the world, three times faster than the global average. We're also the sixth largest importer of wine in the world.
We're very small by global standards, with about 0.5% of global production. We're also small in terms of our comparison to the U.S. Where we have 600 to 700 wineries, they have 10,000. Our economic contribution is $9 billion; theirs is $275 billion. We have 31,000 acres; they have 678,000 acres. This is a David and Goliath story.
Nonetheless, we do support free and fair trade. Since 1987, we've seen wine sales in Canada double to 476 million litres. However, 85% of those sales have gone to imports over the past 30 years, while our market share has decreased from 50% to 32%.
Over that period, we've signed three major agreements: the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, and the Canada-EU wine and spirits agreement.
Since 2004, under the Canada-EU wine and spirits agreement, the EU has benefited from $478 million in increased sales. Our sales to Europe have increased by $838,000.
Since the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, sales to Canada from the U.S. have increased by $485 million to half a billion dollars. That's 13% growth every single year for the past 30 years. Our sales to the U.S. have increased by $8.2 million, or 25,000 cases, over the past 30 years.