Finance committee  Yes, and thank you for the question. I would say that our expectation is, or was, that if the government were going to increase taxes, they would consult with us and look at the balance of the evidence, and see the state of the industry and look at the competitive marketplace in

Finance committee  Right now, their number one concern is what they are going to get hit with next by way of tax.

Finance committee  It's definitely in the mix for our larger members, the ones with a footprint crossing into the United States. They're doing a deep dive to see how attractive Canada remains with the result of both the roll-back in beer excise tax in the United States that U.S. brewers are going t

Finance committee  It's the total market.

Finance committee  Yes. It's on a volume basis.

Finance committee  As I mentioned in my remarks, we've had 45 tax increases across the country on beer. Taxes on beer since 2010 have increased at twice the rate of inflation. We've seen a 10% decline in per capita beer sales over the course of the last decade, and that has implications for governm

Finance committee  The evidence out of the United States is starting to come in. We've seen a decline in beer sales in the state of Colorado of 4.4% since recreational marijuana came on. In February there were news reports in Aspen, Colorado that recreational marijuana sales have now surpassed alco

Finance committee  It's a great question, and there's a variety of reasons for it. One of them is that governments have recognized that the model is broken and they've tried to structure it so they can provide incentives for people to bring capital into the brewing sector, but they have different l

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, for the opportunity to appear here today. My name is Luke Harford. I am the President of Beer Canada, the national voice for beer. I appreciate being able to come here to explain the beer industry's concerns about part 3 of

Health committee  It's not a perfect approach, and I think Health Canada, with the tool box it has, is in a really difficult position. There has to be some expectation that this is going to be dealt with at the provincial level. One thing we're suggesting is the high sweetness level plus being a

Health committee  No, those are in the food and drug regulations. Beer is a standardized product. For anything labelled as a beer, you know exactly what's permitted for use in its manufacturing. It's in the food and drug regulations, as it is for whisky, vodka, wine, ciders, and liqueurs. There ar

Health committee  Yes indeed. What we're suggesting in our remarks is that the bigger the can, or the bigger the serving, the lower the alcohol percentage, so that it's a maximum of 30 grams of alcohol in total. A smaller can or a small bottle could have a higher percentage of alcohol. There are

Health committee  There are two things I would like to say to that. I think a constant theme for the committee as it does its investigation will be this: there's no single silver bullet that will solve all the issues. It will be the way in which the regulations, the educational system, the policin

Health committee  Thank you, and good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Luke Harford. I am the president of Beer Canada, the national voice of beer. I appreciate the opportunity to appear here today to provide input into the committee's study on premixed drinks comb

Finance committee  That's correct. The affordability of beer is becoming an issue for the industry. It has been an emerging issue for some time. Certainly, the automatic nature of the escalator that was brought in under budget 2017 is just going to make the problem worse because it's going to incre