Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part today in this debate on Bill C-47. As it has been often mentioned, the purpose of the bill is to modernize the Excise Act. We are in a situation where all the provisions contained in the Excise Act, which Bill C-47 is supposed to replace, are included in this bill, except anything that has to do with beer.
This is important for what I will call the microbrewery industry. Microbreweries are the pride of several regions in Quebec. As my colleagues pointed out, these beers often have a different taste that has a regional character. These industries employ men and women from every region in Canada, but also from every region in Quebec.
Microbreweries are often symbols of the regions of Quebec. They are employers, they are a driving force for economic development and they are the symbol of a region. They offer consumers a product that is different from those offered by the big Canadian brewers.
The situation in which we find ourselves leads us to the conclusion that a market is developing, resulting in these microbreweries being subjected to unfair competition by other brewers. I will explain.
The beer produced by microbreweries often has to compete against so-called imported beers. Under the current taxation system, the big breweries, like Labatt, enjoy preferential treatment, a preferential tax rate, compared to the microbreweries.
The preferential rate is based on the tax rate. In Canada, there is a charge of 28¢ on Canadian beer. The rate in the U.S. is about the same, except that they have a preferential rate for microbreweries. They consider that a small business does not have the same organizational or financial structure as the big breweries. So, the preferential rate in the U.S. is only 9¢ a bottle, compared to 28¢ in Canada.
Since the tax rate for microbreweries in the U.S. is 19¢ lower than it is in Canada, it is clear that our microbreweries are the victims of unfair competition. Not only is the difference between the tax rate unfair, but microbreweries are far from being defined the same way in Canada and in the U.S.
For instance, to be considered as microbreweries, Canadian breweries have to produce 300,000 hectolitres, compared to almost 1 million hectolitres for U.S. breweries. So, the definition in itself paves the way for the unfair competition Quebec and Canadian microbreweries are victims of.
I have just mentioned the tax rate on one bottle of beer, but if we do the math, we see that for 24 bottles sold in a grocery store, the Canadian government gets $4.09, and the U.S. get $1.12, for a huge difference of $2.90 on a case of 24, which would explain why several of our microbreweries had to close their doors in the last few months and years.
Several regions in Quebec have been hurt by the loss of these small companies that can be competitive if they are given a bit of a tax break, something this bill is not doing.
In the riding of the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot alone, two microbreweries have had to shut down since 1997. We have also lost microbreweries in Saint-Eustache, Baie-Saint-Paul, Montreal and Cap-Chat. Microbreweries, which have, in recent years, become ambassadors abroad for various regions of Quebec and Canada, promote regional development, in terms of growth and symbol. Therefore, these closures were major losses.
We are speaking on behalf of microbrewers, but I want to stress that the Bloc Quebecois did not fight this battle in recent weeks and months only for Quebec microbrewers. We were pleased to see that, just last week, the Canadian Alliance joined forces with the Bloc Quebecois to condemn the current federal preferential system.
We saw Canadian Alliance members ask questions in the House of Commons. It is not because the situation necessarily affects Quebec microbrewers; it is because they realized that microbreweries were in trouble in other Canadian provinces.
Here are some figures. Seven microbreweries have shut down in British Columbia, five in Alberta, one in Manitoba and one in Nova Scotia, for a grand total of more than 38 microbreweries that had to stop operating in Quebec and in the rest of Canada, in part because of the current system.
This means there are only some 40 microbreweries left in Canada. Close to half of the microbrewers had to shut down in recent years, thus leaving the market to the big breweries, such as Labatt. The result is that Quebec and Canadian consumers have only two choices: they can either drink Canadian beer brewed by a big brewery, or imported beer.
Knowing consumers, they will often choose beer from a microbrewery over imported beer, because they like local products.
We hope that the government will listen and will propose provisions to boost these driving forces of the Quebec and Canadian economy.