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“This is just rank protectionism at the provincial level in Canada,” Lighthizer told the U.S. House Ways and Mean Committee in March, adding it was an issue “that you won’t know if you’re making progress on until the end.”

While B.C. is the focus of the current negotiating objectives, the U.S. industry is also focused on widening its access to store shelves in Ontario and Quebec, said Kaiser.

Photo by Gavin Young/Postmedia

“There are other things but that’s the main issue for us,” he said. “We’d like to see those limits curbed or ideally eliminated.”

The U.S. push for more market access has revived old frustrations for some Canadian vintners who say barriers in the U.S. have prevented them from enjoying the same growth as their American counterparts.

Since the repeal of prohibition, alcohol distribution south of the border has occurred through a three-tier system in which producers must sell to wholesale distributors, who then sell to retailers. Only retailers can sell to consumers. The system is costly for small vineyards and especially Canadian producers like Paul Speck who must pay an import fee of up to 35 per cent to get his product into the market.

The California wine industry has done phenomenally well in Canada since NAFTA Canadian wine producer Paul Speck

“There’s lots of unfair trading practices that happen in the United States that they don’t like to talk about,” said Speck, the president of Niagara’s Henry of Pelham winery, who was in Ohio selling wine this week. “I’m in Cleveland selling and I have a 35 per cent disadvantage compared to my competitors. In these trade deals everybody likes to nitpick but at the end of the day the California wine industry has done phenomenally well in Canada since NAFTA.”