A display of wine is shown at BSW Liquor in northeast Calgary on Thursday, March 6, 2025. Photo by Jim Wells /Postmedia

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When Canada’s premiers announced a new agreement on direct-to-consumer alcohol sales this week, many Canadians believed internal trade barriers had finally come down.

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After 14 years of promises, two House of Commons petitions and two private members’ bills, it sounded like a breakthrough. I wanted that to be true.

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Then I read the agreement. This is not a free trade agreement.

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It is an agreement that allows every participating province to continue imposing liquor board markups, fees, registrations, reporting requirements and administrative barriers on Canadian products sold to Canadian consumers. The premiers removed the roadblock. Then they protected the toll booths.

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The most surprising part is what this could mean for British Columbia. Since 2012, B.C. consumers have been able to buy Canadian wine directly from wineries in other participating provinces. That access already existed. The new operating agreement does not protect it. Instead, it expressly preserves the right of provinces to impose liquor board markups, fees and other charges on those same transactions.

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Think about that for a moment. A province that already allowed Canadians to buy Canadian wine directly now has an agreement that protects its ability to make those purchases more expensive. How is that moving Canada forward?

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The timing could not be worse. The United States has imposed a 50-per-cent tariff on Canadian wine, effectively closing one of the most important export markets for many Canadian wineries.

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At exactly the moment Canada should be opening its own domestic market, governments have signed an agreement that protects the ability of provincial liquor monopolies to continue collecting revenue on products they never purchase, warehouse, distribute or deliver.

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Canadians deserve better. This isn’t simply a wine industry issue. It is about whether Canada believes in one national economy or 13 protected provincial markets. Imagine Alberta beef being treated as imported meat when it crosses into Ontario. Imagine Saskatchewan grain being treated as foreign when it enters B.C. Imagine Ontario maple syrup being subjected to an import-style markup in Nova Scotia.

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Canadians would never accept that. Yet Canadian wine, beer, cider and spirits continue to be treated as though crossing a provincial border somehow transforms them into foreign products. No serious producing nation operates this way. France does not treat Burgundy wine as foreign in Bordeaux. Italy does not treat Tuscan wine as foreign in Veneto. Australia does not treat Barossa wine as foreign in Margaret River.