Finance committee  Thank you very much indeed. My name is Miles Prodan. I am the president and executive director of the B.C. Wine Institute. I start off all my presentations by stating the fact that I do not have any samples with me this morning but I do know where you can get some, so bear with

Finance committee  Unlike manufacturing or service enterprises, vineyards cannot simply get up and move to another country, which ensures that federal investment in the industry is maximized to benefit the Canadian economy, communities, and labour force. To conclude, the BCWI strongly recommends t

Finance committee  Thank you. I will first acknowledge Dan Albas and his colleague Ron Cannan for their instrumental work in getting the illicit liquor act of 1928 set back and in opening it up. Alcohol distribution is a provincial matter, and we've had some success. B.C. was the first to step f

Finance committee  Absolutely.

Finance committee  They have gone up, absolutely, and similarly sales of Ontario VQA wines in B.C. have increased as well.

Finance committee  It has not.

Finance committee  Absolutely.

Finance committee  It would be the Canadian producers, clearly. It's the access to the market, and right now we're being blocked from that within Canada. Listen, people really want to be able to enjoy Canadian product. We make a fantastic product, but it's not available. That is blocking us fro

Finance committee  There's only so much consumption, but ultimately it would be the importers if we could take some of that market share away. The overall pie continues to grow, and that was my early opening statement. We are one of the largest-growing wine-consuming countries in the world. The co

Finance committee  The wine industry is incredibly capital-intensive. You have to understand the lag time between when the grapes are harvested to when they are matured in the barrel to the time they make it into the market. That's forgetting, starting from the very beginning, that there's a six-ye

Finance committee  That's an excellent example, because it requires a special tank that's not inexpensive. That product could be put up against any similar sparkling product from around the world. I would argue that it's of better quality.

Finance committee  Absolutely.

Finance committee  Well, we're governed by provincial legislation, so anything the federal government can do to help to open interprovincial trade, to allow 100% B.C. or Canadian product to be shipped to another Canadian, would be great. What I'm here today to ask for, quite simply, is that we kn

Finance committee  Yes, it is. The specifics were provided a week ago.

Finance committee  I'll quickly talk about the wine industry. Yes, we have. To date we have an initiative with the UBC campus here in the Okanagan, and as well KEDGE University out of Bordeaux specializing in wine management, to take a look at some of these issues. That was a WD funded project als