In addition, I am told that for a year and a half, the finance minister has refused to even meet with them. Clearly the big breweries seem to be worried by the arrival of new players in the market. However, we should not be fooled, essentially Molson and Labatt are the ones holding huge shares of the market.
Our role is not to represent only these major businesses who have their own interests. I can understand why they would be lobbying. However, the government has to stand up to them. Small businesses are trying to develop and could become extremely interesting players. They could create jobs.
In the past few years, big breweries have experienced some problems. Time and again in Montreal, there were closures and job cuts. This was to be expected with more foreign competition. However while local players are struggling to develop, the government does not help them, claiming it has to support the major players that are left. This makes no sense.
It should send a clear message. At the very least, the government could have acknowledged that we are right, and promised a new bill before the summer recess. We could co-operate, and the bill could go through very quickly. There is no problem if the government wants to rapidly pass a bill to help microbreweries. But that was not to be. They will pass Bill C-47, and that will be the end of it.
In committee, when the Bloc raised the issue, its amendments were ruled out of order. This raises major questions about the ability of the committee to work properly. Moreover, we have an extremely important ethical problem here because the chair of the committee is the spouse of a man who is involved in lobbying for Labatt. It is beyond me.
The chair of the committee is hiding behind the fact that she had an opinion telling her that everything was fine, but she kept it to herself during all the committee proceedings. She never told the committee from the outset that if the microbreweries were discussed, she might be in a conflict of interest. Had she done so, the committee could have decided what was to be done.
What kind of message does this send to people watching this? They say to themselves “Things were rigged from the start. The large breweries had lobbied. They had done whatever was necessary to ensure the debate would not go any further, that the tax for microbreweries would not be included in the bill and that nobody could add it afterwards”.
Now the end of the session is near. We will soon be leaving for the summer and next fall we will work on something else. However, these people from the microbrewery industry need support right now.
At one point, when they came here a few years ago, I was under the impression that the government would automatically listen. What was being asked was only common sense compared to what was being done elsewhere. Now, a few years later, we have not moved forward a single bit.
Hopefully the members on the other side will show some sense in the last hours of this debate and bring forward amendments to this bill. It is not difficult. We only need to pass an amendment or table a new bill that says, “Here, we will amend the regime”. We would be pleased to co-operate on such an initiative. In any event, the legislative agenda is not exactly overloaded. We have the capacity to do it. So let us do it and the committee will have all the time to perform its work correctly if it has to hold a few hearings on the subject. Ultimately, I think we could even dispense with that stage.
We now have to decide if we are going to help the microbreweries or not and, judging by their silence, I think the Liberals have already made up their minds. They will favour the large breweries over the microbreweries. We will not, however, be able to support the government in this instance.