Mr. Speaker, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to Bill C-47, which deals with the taxation of spirits, wine, tobacco and beer.
I hesitate to say “and beer” because it is not mentioned in the title. However, the bill defines what beer is, what a brewery is, what this and that is with regard to beer.
It makes me wonder. Why would there be a definition of beer when beer is mentioned nowhere else in the bill? I have the feeling that, as a result of pressures from large breweries, the government decided to exclude beer from this bill.
Why exclude beer? When we talk about beer, we obviously have to talk about microbreweries. We know that microbrewery products are becoming increasingly popular in Quebec.
Unfortunately, if the beer market continues in the same direction and if the government does not decide to be fair to these microbreweries, there will not be a single one left five or ten years from now. For those who need proof, in 1997, there were about 90 microbreweries in Canada, but that number has now dwindled down to less than 30.
I am speaking from experience. In my beautiful and charming riding of Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, which I am proud to represent and which includes the cities of Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac, Deux-Montagnes, Saint-Eustache, Boisbriand and Sainte-Thérèse, we lost, in Saint-Eustache, a microbrewery that employed some twenty workers. These workers, who were beer experts, could not find another job. I think that, unfortunately, when they stopped drawing EI benefits, they became social welfare recipients, which means that the Government of Quebec has to support them.
Why are these microbreweries, of which the two most popular in Quebec are the Brasseurs du Nord which brews Boréale, and Unibroue which brews Blanche de Chambly, U, etc., in dire financial straits? Simply because microbreweries pay excise taxes that are way too high.
They pay a 28 cent excise tax per hectolitre, while their competitors, microbrewers from United States, France, Germany and Belgium, pay 9 cents a litre. Once they are established on the Canadian market, they have difficulty to remain competitive.
There is something even more degrading and malicious about the bill. I want to talk about Brassal, a microbrewery in LaSalle. It had to compete with Labatt, which is also located in LaSalle. It also had to compete with foreign microbrewers who were exporting their products to Canada through Labatt.
The big Canadian brewers, Labatt, Molson—about Molson, allow me, Mr. Speaker, to congratulate your son Brad for the remarkable work he is doing with the Montreal Canadiens. As I was saying, Molson and Labatt import American beers onto the Canadian market to compete against small Canadian brewers with a homemade product.
So they take the gun, if I can put it that way, and shoot our small Canadian brewers by using imports against them. That is the way they show their pride in being Canadian and Quebecers: by killing the competition in a roundabout way. This is unacceptable.
We learned that the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance unfortunately rejected an amendment moved by my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe--Bagot, which would have included beer in the bill. I think that beer was previously included in the bill, since it had definitions for beer and brewery. Why include definitions when one does not want to talk about what they refer to? Why define beer when one does not want to refer to it in the bill?
Were government members subjected to undue influence? Did the government do the bidding of the big breweries by withdrawing the beer from Bill C-47? This stinks. It reminds us the Gagliano case. We will have to open new embassies in distant lands for some ministers.
On a more serious note, when the bill is referred to the Standing Committee on Finance, we will have to sit down, get serious and really be mindful of the needs of microbreweries. Beer and most of all microbreweries will have to be part of Bill C-47 again.