Government Operations committee  At that time, that was actually a misquote. We were well over $500,000 behind the eight ball at that time. I think it's more than that. People wanted to do the right thing. It was a time when all of the distillers I talked to across Canada were just so overwhelmingly happy. They were getting supported by the community, just like my colleague said.

Government Operations committee  No, I cannot either, on that one.

Government Operations committee  Yes, I would say it was very similar in nature. Of course, both of our distilleries on the craft side are probably on the larger side of the craft side, the artisanal side, if you want to call it that. With a lot of our other distillers, there might be only four people in the distillery, so their retooling costs probably would have been in the tens of thousands of dollars, and then they would have lost alcohol that they could normally sell for $50 a bottle.

Government Operations committee  At the heart of it, it just was not what I expected from the officials we elected. I'm not putting blame on any one person; sometimes it's just the system itself. The article was also in relation to the fact that we had just found out at the provincial level that, although the provincial government had asked me to go ahead and ask all of our distillers to step up and said it would pay for it, it decided as well to not do that.

Government Operations committee  Yes. Actually, Health Canada was great to work with. They very quickly approved things when we pointed out areas that just seemed like unnecessary red tape. They seemed to come up with a workaround, at least a temporary one. They were very easy to work with on that. Again, hand sanitizer is not rocket science.

Government Operations committee  Yes, I do think it ends, speaking not just for ourselves but also on behalf of the other distillers. I think they feel very disheartened. This is not the Canada they stand for. I think we're all brought up to treat people well and to do our best, and with the idea that if we do good things it's not that we're doing them for a reward, but that there might be some recognition.

Government Operations committee  It's a difficult one. I can tell you in talking with distillers across Canada, I think most of us are much more interested in working collaboratively with government to find solutions that would allow our industry to be more robust moving forward. Almost all of our other G7 trading partners have changed federal acts and excise taxation policy to promote domestically made products.

Government Operations committee  Yes, it's 12.7¢ now. It goes up every year.

Government Operations committee  No, for 750 millilitres, the federal rate you'd pay is about $3.60 to $3.70 just in excise, but then—

Government Operations committee  I think that is the way forward, because otherwise it's like a patchwork quilt of “let's give these guys 100,000 and let's do this.” Really, for the longevity of our industry, it makes sense to allow us to have the same taxation advantages that our partners we compete against south of the border have.

Government Operations committee  Yes. Well, what happens is that the U.S. just reduced theirs permanently, so they are at one-seventh of our taxation rate on the first 100,000 proof gallons. Now, that's only a day or so production at Jack Daniel's, so it's not huge. It's a small volume, but what it has done is created 1,000 new distillery starts across the country.

Government Operations committee  As far as I know, none of our members have received assistance directly linked to production changeover. I'm talking about B.C. We have 70 craft distilleries here in B.C. Early on there were only a couple of dozen who did the conversion. A bunch of others were waiting to see. With the positive words coming out of Ottawa and out of our own province—John Horgan was doing the same thing, saying, “Hey, we've got your back, thanks for doing the right thing”—I think it's fair to say that a lot of national distillers were emboldened by that and they doubled down.

Government Operations committee  I'd have to go back and check in my notes, but I believe usually we would go through at the federal level, because a lot of what we deal with is excise, and that's what I was alluding to for the other competitiveness model. We'd go through Finance or Agriculture and would usually cc the PM's Office and be that annoying sort of agitator trying to get as many people on that list as possible.

Government Operations committee  I will keep it short so that maybe my colleague can answer too. I feel like I'm robbing all the time here. At our distillery, we are 100% farm-to-flask. We do not buy in any alcohol. What happened is we ceased production of all our whisky lines. We do 32 different products. All of the stills were running to make alcohol and to refine it up to 96% alcohol, which we could then use for hand sanitizer instead of for our products.

Government Operations committee  Exactly, and it was getting worse and worse. They just had to pull aside. Then the slap in the face, really, came with that December investigative report, where, whoa, $300 million was spent and it didn't go to a Canadian company. One guy jumped in—