Madam Speaker, I agree with much of what is being said today, particularly by the sponsor of the bill, the member for Okanagan—Coquihalla. He is a well informed advocate on behalf of the wine producers of his region as is the member for Kelowna—Lake Country, who was the sponsor of this legislation in the last Parliament.
I am supporting this bill in part because of what it would do for the wine industry and also because of what it potentially would do as a model for all of our value-added agricultural products, for which wine is the template model.
We have an agricultural industry which ultimately goes in one of two directions. It can either produce on a mass scale some kind of modified product, and there is nothing wrong with doing that and doing it effectively, but that naturally assumes economies of scale and the end of the family-operated farm or agricultural producer, or it can produce a value-added quality product which has a clear line of sight between the producer and the consumer, so that the consumer can identify that he or she really likes a certain product and then chooses to seek out that product either through a retailer or through direct purchase from the producer.
That is what we are trying to cause to happen with this legislation, to allow individuals to visit a winery in whatever province it happens to be, find a product they like, and arrange to have it shipped back to them. This is something which I have done myself within my own province.
A few years back my wife and I visited the Niagara Peninsula and arranged to have a couple of bottles of wine every month sent from Andrew Peller Estates to our house in Lanark County. That is possible because they are both in the same province. If there were an intervening provincial boundary, we would be out of luck and the winery would be out of luck, and that potential relationship would be severed. Again, we are not commodity consumers of wine my wife and I. We are not volume consumers, but we are willing to spend more to get a better product to make our evenings and meals more enjoyable.
I think that reflects many consumers of wine and of other products that are of a similar nature, such as cider, craft root beer, various maple products, various types of cheese, and so on. All of these can follow potentially the model that is presented by wine, and which if we think about it, is an agricultural product. It is nothing more than grape juice that has been fermented a certain way. The grapes are certainly fermented a certain way, preserved a certain way either in oak barrels or in bottles, and then sent off to the consumer. As a result of the magic that happens in between, it becomes a potentially valuable product and it allows the creation of a robust, rural economy.
Many links have already been pointed out. Agri-tourism results from a prosperous wine growing region. I am an enthusiastic agri-tourist myself, and particularly the various wine trails. I am just going to give a small and partial list of some of the wine trails I have been on to make the point because they are models of what can happen when producers can establish that link with consumers and start shipping products to those who like what they taste.
I have been on the wine trail and have visited vineyards in, among other places, California, New York State, and Massachusetts of all places. I was on a tour in New Zealand along with several other MPs and we went to some of the wineries there. I have also been to five different Australian states, every Australian state except Queensland, which is too warm to grow a decent wine. I could go on.
I have visited wineries in a number of provinces, but I have never been able to legally import that wine. I was on the wine trail in the Saint-Jean region of Quebec. I was on the wine trail from Nova Scotia back to Ontario. I inadvertently, and unknowingly illegally, brought back some Quebec wine. I did not know there was Quebec wine until I went to language training in Saint-Jean and discovered SAQ, bought a bunch of it, brought it back, again breaking the law unknowingly. I am no longer in contravention of the law because the wine is now gone. That should not have happened.
Had I actually known that I was doing this and said that I liked this stuff and wanted to buy some more, they would have told me I could not do that. That is a problem that should be corrected. One of the reasons why it should be corrected and why this rule change is beneficial in Canada in a way that would not conflict with jurisdictions is that our wine industry is not based on the kind of mass production in some other jurisdictions. In parts of South America such as Chile, Argentina or in Spain there are entire landscapes which have rows and rows as far as the eye can see of grapevines producing massive quantities of what is largely a commodity product.
Canada's wine production is based on microproduction, microclimates, and small areas. In Quebec, for example, the wine areas were located and identified largely by Swiss investors who were familiar with growing on south-facing hillsides in their own country and identified using satellite images of soil temperature, areas that would successfully have microclimates. When there is a microclimate in a small area to work with, there has to be a certain type of production which is all about quality rather than quantity.
That means it is linked into agri-tourism, visiting people from other provinces, people who are going to establish a taste for the wine which is already a premium product and arrange to ship it back. That is the kind of market that naturally will benefit from a widespread market, a market that is thin in terms of the number of people in any given part of the country who like the product, but broad in terms of the coverage.
Speaking of another illegal wine drinking experience I had at one point, some friends went to Nova Scotia, brought back sparkling wine my colleague talked about a minute ago from Jost. We enjoyed it together in Ontario illegally and unknowingly. I could not go to the Jost website to order some for my personal consumption. I could visit Nova Scotia, but realistically developing a market through the Internet is not an option that is available to me as it would be, ironically, if I were returning home from Nova Scotia to my home in the State of Maine. That definitely is a particular aspect that needs to be emphasized.
We are trying to get rid for the sake of prosperity of various trade barriers. On the international level we are doing a better and better job as a country. We established the North American Free Trade Agreement. We have negotiated trade agreements with countries as small and remote as Colombia and Jordan, and with various European countries. We are now working on removing trade barriers with the EU as a whole, also India. There are a lot of exciting things going on and some of the provinces, to their credit, are trying to get rid of their own trade barriers. British Columbia and Alberta negotiated a trade agreement which was called TILMA and I think Saskatchewan has joined in, and that is good.
This, however, through an artifact of history, is a federally created trade barrier. This is a step we as federal politicians, federal statesmen let us say, can take to get rid of an unnecessary impediment to the prosperity of our rural areas, to the cultural well-being of our consumers, and to the general betterment of the kind of rural areas that people like me represent.
In my riding we have two wineries at this point. Again, most of the riding is far too cold, but on the north shore of Lake Ontario in Lennox Addington County there is an area where it is possible to grow wine in small quantities, but it is very good wine. Two wineries, Bergeron and 33 Vines, are in many respects typical of the kinds of vineyards that are across the country in many provinces that deserve to have the ability to sell across provincial lines to the willing and enthusiastic customers who are out there hoping to sample their excellent product.