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Chad Rogers REALTOR®
The week of April 10, 2026
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By Jeff McDonald Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Local winemaker, Peachland MP, pushing for free wine trade between provinces
I
f you’re in BC and you want to order a case of wine directly from a producer in Ontario’s Niagara winemaking region, you can just pick up the phone or order online. But if you’re in Ontario, you can’t legally call up Lightning Rock Winery in Summerland and ask for a case of owner Ron Kubek’s wine to be shipped to you. Ontario doesn’t let producers from outside the province ship direct to consumers. All out-of-province wines, or beer or cider or spirits, have to go through Ontario’s provincial liquor distributor, which means big markups and paperwork. Only four Canadian provinces allow direct-to-consumer shipping – B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia. The remaining
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TRADE BARRIERS
provinces and territories make it illegal without adding on markups, which are tariffs by another name and effectively kill the trade. Smaller wineries in BC don’t produce enough to get space on BC Liquor Store shelves or in other provincial liquor distributors, so selling direct to consumers across Canada, especially in big markets like Ontario and Quebec, would mean a big increase in sales and revenue, says Kubek. “We believe it’s about 25 per cent to 35 per cent of our business could increase if we could ship to the rest of Canada,” he said. “We’re dealing with the Liquor Control Board of Ontario to get my wine into Ontario and they want a 70 per cent markup.” Kubek has started a petition in support of Bill C-262, introduced last month by Okanagan Lake West-South Kelowna member of parliament Dan Albas, which includes Peachland. The legislation would establish a national framework allowing winemakers and other alcohol producers to ship products directly to consumers across the country without penalty, regardless of which province the wine is produced or where a consumer lives. Kubek said the number of
Photo: Lightning Rock Winery
Owner of Lightning Rock Winery, Ron Kubek, has started a petition in support of a bill allowing winemakers to ship products across Canada without penalty.
petition signatures is growing. “At the beginning of last week we had about 650 and I know that we’re getting close to 1000. We’d like to get up to 4000. You know, you can have free trade on anything on Amazon, but heaven forbid you should make a product in BC and want to be able to ship it legally to the rest of Canada,” he said. Getting rid of provincial barriers to trade would help Canada create a national internal market for the wine it produces
and expand the industry considerably, Kubek said, just like other countries do, leading to more investment, more jobs and more wine tourism. Only 12 per cent of the wine drunk in Canada is made in Canada, he said. “In France, for example, 70 per cent of the wine is from France. In Italy, it’s 65 per cent. In Spain, it’s even higher than 75 per cent. But in Canada, because we have these little dictatorship monopolies that SEE TRADE PAGE 7