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Solicitor General Also Calls for Reform to Wine Shipping Laws

Solicitor General Rich Coleman has added his voice to the calls for reforms to Canada\’s archaic federal law that prohibits the inter-provincial shipment of wine. In an article for the Vancouver Sun published Monday, February 28th, Okanagan Wine Culture Slams Into Prohibition-Era, Coleman describes the law as being \”silly\” and \”difficult to enforce\”. Coleman is right. This federal law is a national embarassment and should have been reformed long ago. Gordon Hamilton has a very smart discussion of the issues in this blog piece which appeared to accompany the article: Prohibition-era wine law called \”silly\” by BC Solicitor General

In a separate article, Coleman also mused about changing BC\’s wacky \”ad valorem\” markup system for wine to a flat tax system: Lobby effort grows for flat tax markup system for wine at restaurants which would also be a good idea if extended to all distribution channels. Is this wine law reform week? By the way, I have it on good authority that \”ad valorem\” is Latin for \”a formula which results in staggering tax burdens for the consumer but which is deliberately designed to be so insanely complicated that most people will not be able to understand its effects\”.

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