Why is it harder to transport wine across a Canadian provincial border than nuclear fuel?

Help us fix Canada’s antiquated wine laws at winecampaign.ca

The fastest way to understand how out of date Canada’s archaic liquor laws are is to compare them to laws we have for the transport of other controlled substances.

Let’s take one of the most dangerous substances possible: nuclear fuel.

According to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), more than one million packages carrying a variety of nuclear substances are transported safely within Canada each year.

The rules surrounding the transport of radioactive material in Canada are fairly straightforward. As long as the consignor submits a transportation plan for the radioactive material to the CNSC, and as long as the radioactive material is transported in a CNSC-approved container, they may transport the material pretty much anywhere it is needed in the country.

Let’s take another example: guns.

Myriad rules surround the transportation and operation of restricted firearms in Canada (they are, after all, ‘restricted’ firearms). But non-restricted firearms? Canadians can transport those anywhere they’d like without seeking the permission of authorities.

Let’s look at one more example: Canadian wine.

As it stands now, the only way to legally bring wine into most Canadian provinces is to buy that wine through the liquor board of that specific province.

Ontarioans who wish to buy wine from BC, for example, must do so through the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. The province’s power to enforce such a monopoly comes from a Prohibition-era piece of legislation called the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act (IILA), passed in 1928.

Save for a small group of activists in the Canadian wine industry, few Canadians seem to know that this law exists. There are likely thousands of Canadians carry spirits, beer and wine across provincial borders every year, all of them blissfully unaware that they are breaking a nearly 90-year-old law.

The IILA doesn’t just prevent liquor imports within Canada — it also prohibits bringing liquor across the U.S border, which means that the tens of thousands of Canadians who bring liquor across the U.S. border every year are also breaking the law.

From a transportation standpoint, the IILA makes wine one of the most regulated substances in this country. Legally speaking, it is easier for Canadians to transport nuclear fuel and non-restricted firearms across provincial borders than it is to transport wine across those same borders.

This might sound ridiculous, but it is also very real.

If someone does attempt to circumvent the provincial liquor board and transport their wine across a provincial border, they could face a jail sentence up to 12 months long.

In 2012, the RCMP arrested Gerard Comeau for transporting a dozen cases of beer from Quebec to New Brunswick in a sting operation. Comeau’s case is expected to rise to the Supreme Court, where the constitutionality of the IILA will be examined very closely.

And rightly so. Because if the past criticisms of the IILA by legal experts are anything to go by, the act is without question unconstitutional.

According to Toronto lawyer Ian Blue, IILA’s fatal flaw is that it ignores section 121 of the Constitution Act, which prevents the passage of any laws which would impede the free movement of goods between the provinces.

Dividing the country into economic zones might have made sense in 1928, when there were still Canadian provinces enforcing full prohibition. But today, it creates a bizarre system where Canadians are discouraged from buying wine made anywhere in Canada except for their home province.

Because of the IILA, the Canadian wine industry is one of the few industries in the world where consumers are actively discouraged from buying products made in their home country.

It’s time to get rid of the IILA, and create a system that encourages Canadians to support winemakers in this country.

Help us fix Canada’s antiquated wine laws at winecampaign.ca