N.S. wine growers walk away from government working group

Premier Tim Houston's peace accord with the farm wine sector came crashing down on Tuesday when the co-chair of a working group resigned because of what he called an insulting proposal from the government for how it plans to support the sector.

"After eight months of discussion, the government presented the group with proposals that were incomplete and had the appearance of being written on the back of a napkin minutes before the meeting commenced," Karl Coutinho wrote in a letter to the premier, a copy of which was shared with news outlets.

"The senior bureaucrats themselves seemed distant, unprepared, borderline hostile to people investing in this province and were unable to answer many questions. Wine grower and grape grower representatives left feeling discouraged, disheartened, and disillusioned."

Houston created the working group last spring in response to intense scrutiny his government faced following a subsidy it created for the two commercial wine bottlers in the province. The subsidy for commercial bottlers was also paused.

Members of the farm wine sector said that the support program for the bottlers jeopardized their industry because it provided a subsidy for the importation of foreign grape juice. Such a move would help reduce costs and increase output to levels the farm wineries cannot compete with, representatives have said.

In an interview, Luckett Vineyards co-owner Geena Luckett said the proposal from the government would see a subsidy based on sales at Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation stores increased from 50 per cent to 65 per cent for farm wineries. The increase for commercial bottlers would go from seven per cent to 35 per cent. There would also be new wine sector development funding.

"And although we are very appreciative of any type of increase in the investment, that does not equitably represent what our industry puts back into the Nova Scotia province," said Luckett.

Luckett said the request from the sector all along has been for the subsidy to be centred on agriculture, similar to programs in other parts of the country. It would reward production based in Nova Scotia, using Nova Scotia grapes, by measuring "litres at the tank" and be available to anyone producing wine in the province that is sold, regardless of whether it's sold in the NSLC.

"Let's have a program that ties vines to the ground, ties jobs to our rural economy and those same commercial bottlers can access those programs, as well," said Luckett.

Province will release offer to public

A statement from the province's Finance Department said the proposal to the sector was based on the recommendations of an independent, third-party report.

"The report's authors were identified by the wine sector," department spokesperson Monica MacLean said in the statement.

"At the very high level, the changes included an additional $1.6 million in direct payments for farm wineries. This would bring the total support for farm wineries to $6.6 million. Commercial wine bottlers would have received direct payments capped up to $1 million per year, per producer. There are two commercial wine bottlers so the total potential that part of the sector would receive is up to $2 million in a fiscal year."

MacLean said the government would share the report and more information about the proposal soon in order to give the public "an unbiased and direct understanding of the proposal."

But Coutinho's letter to Houston said the proposal "selectively cherry-picked" from that report and ignored recommendations not to provide subsidies for producers that already benefit from subsidies connected to other jurisdictions.

Calls for meeting with premier

In his letter to the premier, Coutinho writes that response measures by Wine Growers Nova Scotia would include lobbying the public to boycott the purchase of any product containing foreign content that has been subsidized by the province and stop providing Nova Scotia farm wine products to trade missions where any elected representatives of the provincial government are present.

In an interview, Coutinho, who is also co-owner of Avondale Sky Winery and chair of Wine Growers Nova Scotia, said he reached out to Houston because he wanted him to know how detrimental the current proposal is to the province's grape growing industry.

He's hoping the premier will give things a second look, the way he did back in March when he paused the commercial bottlers subsidy program.

After getting the letter, Houston reached out via text to ask more questions. Coutinho said he tried to explain the situation while also requesting a meeting. As the "ultimate decision maker," Houston's job as premier is to do what's right for Nova Scotians, said Coutinho, adding that the program the government is advancing isn't that.

"They've got a Nova Scotia Loyal program. They have to understand that bringing in wine from elsewhere and literally packaging it here and subsidizing it with the Nova Scotia taxpayers' money is not loyal to Nova Scotia."