Federal funding for wine sector renewed
Wine producers in the Bromemissisquoi region are breathing a sigh of relief after federal agriculture minister Lawrence Macaulay and minister responsible for economic development for the regions of Quebec Pascale St-onge announced $177 million in funding for Canadian wineries through the Wine Sector Support Program (WSSP). The first edition of the program, launched as a pilot project in 2022, doled out $166 million to winemakers across the country, aimed at supporting individual winemakers who are working on projects to increase climate resilience, build production capacity or encourage tourism.
Support was given to 105 Quebec wineries through the first iteration of the program, including 25 in the Brome-missisquoi region, according to Francis Chechile, a spokesperson for
Agriculture and Agri-food Canada.
St-onge made the funding announcement on March 4 at Vignoble Léon Courville in Brome Lake. “Although the Canadian wine industry has experienced considerable growth in recent years, it continues to face a series of pressures that impact its financial resilience and competitiveness. These pressures include rising input prices, labour shortages, climate-related limitations and severe weather events,” she said in a statement. “Quebec has a small, innovative and growing wine industry, and the province’s wineries continue to be at the forefront of current trends and evolving tastes. Today’s announcement recognizes the importance of investing in this thriving industry, as wine growers face complex challenges to maintain a competitive advantage and continue to support local economic growth.”
Rob Taylor is the director of policy and government relations for Wine Growers Canada. He said growers “appreciate the leadership and support” of elected officials from all parties as the wine sector navigates the impact of climate change.
He noted that Canadian-made wines enjoyed an exemption from domestic excise taxes until 2022, when the World Trade Organization ruled that the exemption constituted inappropriate state support; the government and growers then had to develop a more creative way to support the local wine industry amid cheaper, higher-volume, heavily subsidized European imports. The WSSP, which distributes funding based on the production volume of each winery as a percentage of the total production of the province, is the result of that brainstorming. “Some [wineries] have increased the capacity of their vats, others have looked into weatherresistant varietals or expanded their planting, or made climate adaptations to protect the vines – there have been a lot of innovations.”
Taylor said the program is particularly important in light of the unpredictable climatic conditions British Columbia and the Maritimes have experienced in recent years. “In British Columbia, for example, you had the heat dome [in 2021], then forest fires, then an ‘atmospheric river’ which led to flooding … then, last winter, there was a damaging deep freeze, then another summer of forest fires followed by the most recent and most severe deep freeze, which we aren’t accustomed to. Those are once in a century-type events and having them happen back-to-back in the span of three or four years was unexpected. [Climate change] is happening a lot faster and more dramatically than we expected, and we have to make sure we’re producing the right grape varieties and adapting.”
Growers can apply for WSSP funding between April 1 and May 1. More information is available on the Agriculture and Agri-food Canada website.