He is the former mayor and also a former Conservative member. He is known for changing his mind quite often.
When he was mayor, he protected the interests of that microbrewery located in his community. He worked hard to protect it, to get the licences it needed, to ensure it could expand, because the microbrewery was located right next to his pub. So distribution was not a problem. The beer was sent directly to the pub next door.
The Liberal member for Compton—Stanstead is not rising to protect the interests of a microbrewery located in his riding. What is he doing? I think he is a fellow citizen of mine. If he had problems, I would probably come to his aid. Yet, if the microbrewery located in his riding has problems, he does not care. He relies on the Bloc Quebecois member for the riding of Sherbrooke to protect the interests of the microbrewery that is located in his town, even though he is the member representing that riding.
So, this is a person who can change his mind. We saw it, he changes his mind about parties and about values. He will probably also change his mind about the beer that he drinks and switch from the beer produced by that microbrewery to beer produced by Labatt or Molson probably.
I believe it is essential that Liberal members take a stand. A number of them have microbreweries in their riding. They must take a stand, because this is the thing to do. Of course, the Excise Act brings in large amounts of money for the government, but the primary objective should be to help the industry. We must help industry develop. It should be the government's duty to do so, instead of working against it to ensure that only two large breweries reap all the benefits.
The beer produced by microbreweries is a quality product in my opinion. The people who work in the sector are competitive and they work hard. I will repeat what I mentioned earlier, when I said that distribution is very difficult. The microbreweries have to compete with the big breweries, which import beer with very low excise taxes. So it is not an even playing field.
One of the objectives of the Excise Tax Act is to manage industry, whether it be microbreweries or another sector, such as wineries. However, I think it is important that the government review its position and ensure that Bill C-47 includes beer and microbreweries.