Yesterday, the Conservatives put forward a private member’s bill (Bill C-262) that was described as being a solution to Canada’s national problems with interprovincial alcohol shipment (DTC). The proposal is described more fully here: Conservatives Want To Make It Easier to Mail Alcohol Between Provinces. You can also read the actual text of Bill C-262 here. Internal Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc even said that he thought the idea was a “good one”.
While I support both the spirit of this effort and the ability of Canada Post to deliver alcohol between provinces, it seems to me that this Bill is not an adequate solution … and could create additional problems for affected wineries. My thoughts on this are as follows.
Firstly, as far as I can tell, there is nothing in the current legislation that governs Canada Post that prevents it from delivering alcohol between provinces. Indeed, Canada Post has a policy on the delivery of intoxicating beverages that states that they will currently make interprovincial shipments so long as the shipper complies with the relevant provincial laws. It is the combination of the relevant federal (Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act) and provincial laws that creates the legal DTC problem … not the Canada Post Corporation Act.
The real problem is that there are still a number of provincial laws that make it either illegal for the customer to receive the interprovincial shipment or which impose such onerous obligations on the customer and/or winery as to make it impractical.
Bill C-262 doesn’t make any substantive changes to this legal structure … other than to explicitly state that Canada Post must provide an alcohol delivery service … and gives them an initial monopoly on doing so. In other words, it addresses the choice of ‘transport’ of the shipment rather than the overall legality of the entire transaction. It’s the latter issue that needs to be addressed to fix the problem.
At a recent AIDV webinar, a panel of experts brainstormed this issue. One of the ideas was for the federal government to proactively create a national exemption for personal shipments of alcohol between provinces. This should be done under the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act … which is the federal legislation that governs the trade in interprovincial and international alcohol (rather than the Canada Post Corporation Act). While there could be legal challenges, this would arguably (and practically) have the effect of over-riding provincial restrictions since the federal government has the exclusive jurisdiction under our Constitution to make laws regarding interprovincial trade.
Essentially, this would create an “internal duty-free exemption” similar to the one that is in effect at our international border for returning travellers. Canadians would be able to order and receive specified quantities of alcohol from other provinces without worrying about interference from their local liquor monopoly … a concept that works well nearly everywhere else in the world.
Indeed, this model has been working splendidly since 2012 in Manitoba where its residents have enjoyed the freedom to order alcohol from other provinces for years … without any apparent significant issues … and without any noticeable effect on provincial liquor revenues.
A national personal exemption would accomplish this and fix the problem properly. Here is my first draft of an amendment to the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act that could potentially fix this.
Personal Exemption
9. Notwithstanding any other Act or law, a person is permitted to import, or cause to be imported, into a province from another province an amount and type of intoxicating liquor for personal consumption that is specified by regulation and in a frequency and manner specified by regulation.
Personal Exemption Regulation
1. For the purposes of s.9 of the Act, the amounts and types of intoxicating liquor for personal consumption that are permitted are, for each person:
a) x litres of wine;
b) x litres of beer; and
c) x litres of spirits.
2. The amounts and types of intoxicating liquor specified in section 1 may be imported by each person in any 30 day period and either by in-person importation or by delivery by any common carrier from the other province.
Secondly, I do not understand why Bill C-262 proposes to give Canada Post an initial monopoly on interprovincial shipments of alcohol. Most wineries in BC do not currently use Canada Post as their preferred shipper. There are many reasons for not doing so … one of the most important of which is that they do not use temperature controlled trucks.
The Bill contemplates adding “trusted” carriers eventually … but why should those carriers have to go through a bureaucratic approval process to get the ability to do something that they are already doing well right now? If passed, the Bill would effectively prevent existing carriers from delivering alcohol until they got approval as a “trusted carrier” through some yet to be created bureaucracy. The last thing Canadian wineries need right now is to grant another ‘monopoly’ on anything liquor related to a branch of government.
So to conclude, while any discussion of these issues at the national level is helpful, I do not think that Bill C-262 solves the problem. Instead, let’s consider a national personal use exemption … and let any current common carrier make those deliveries.