Wine trade within Canada still being blocked

(CBC) - Small Canadian wine producers say provincial barriers are still making it difficult for consumers to order from outside their home province, one year after the federal government eased its own restrictions.

Parliament last year removed its ban on interprovincial wine orders, but most provinces still block consumers from ordering from wineries in other parts of the country.

One vineyard owner says he still has trouble even shipping to provinces next door, and he's calling on provincial governments to change their laws.

"We get a lot of requests from outside of the province for our wines," Bruce Ewert, owner of L'Acadie Vineyards, told the CBC's Rosemary Barton.

"From our point of view, from a producer point of view, it's mainly the other provinces that have to open up their borders for us to ship to them."

Ewert says being able to ship to more provinces would mean a 20 to 25 per cent boost to his business.

"We're fairly well-known and we get requests all the time, so to be able to ship to these people instead of saying 'sorry, we can't because of interprovincial barriers,' would be quite good for us. We'd be able to ship a lot more wine."