Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise and speak on Bill C-203, a bill to amend the Agreement on Internal Trade Implementation Act.
I would like to congratulate the member for Lakeland for this initiative. I would like to congratulate our government as well for making some early moves in the right direction. As the parliamentary secretary indicated, more needs to be done, but I am very happy that we have started the process.
If we look at it from the point of view of economic efficiency, it does seem somewhat ironic that as we are breaking down barriers to trade internationally, we still do have some barriers to trade within our own country.
Within that context I wonder if we could talk briefly about the brewing industry. The brewing industry and the location of brewing plants in Canada has been one of those issues within the context of the internal trade agreement that has received some profile and some attention.
In my riding of Etobicoke North I have two very large breweries, a big Molson brewery and a big Labatt brewery. I have many dealings as a result of that with the brewing industry. When I speak with them we often discuss how the brewing industry in the United States has evolved. There are typically very large brewing plants in the United States in one location or two locations and they serve the domestic U.S.A. market and perhaps the market internationally. They tend to have huge plants and they capitalize on some tremendous economies of scale.
In Canada the brewing industry has developed somewhat differently. We have a number of smaller plants which are relatively large in size but compared to the megaplants in the United States, they tend to be smaller and they tend to be spread out across Canada. As I understand it, the reason that has evolved is that many provinces—including I suspect the province of Alberta, but I do not know that for certain—but various provinces have insisted that for the national breweries to do business in their province, they have restricted transport movements of beer. It really has meant that the brewing industry has been required to set up brewing plants in very many of the provinces. Presumably some of the major breweries have established plants in Alberta. Again, I do not have those facts in front of me.
If the barriers to internal trade are removed for the brewing industry, it would undoubtedly mean that some of the smaller plants across the prairies, in British Columbia, in the maritime provinces and in Ontario would shut down and a lot of the production would be consolidated into megaplants. I wonder if the hon. member for Lakeland would see that as a positive step and whether he would support it.