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“It really comes to levelling the playing field similar to what the rest of this free trade agreement is doing,” Bilous said. “We need to make sure that happens when it comes to alcohol.”

Terry Rock, executive director of the Alberta Small Brewers Association, said brewers in the province have long been frustrated that Alberta’s open liquor market gives competitors in B.C. and Saskatchewan full access to liquor stores here, but that access is not reciprocated.

” “If we don’t fix this problem, we’ll never build a national industry. We’ll never see the kind of brands we’ve seen develop in the United States come out of here,” Rock said. “We (the brewers’ association) will happily participate in any consultation that are done, and we will extol the virtues of an open inter-provincial market in alcohol.”

In the absence of an open inter-provincial trade system for alcohol, the Alberta government unveiled a grant program last summer specifically for the province’s small brewers. The program is aimed at growing Alberta’s craft beer industry, but is currently being challenged in the courts by two out-of-province brewers who say it is discriminatory.

The text of the new trade agreement specifically prohibits provinces from providing incentives, including cash grants, “on preferential terms” to local enterprises. But Bilous said he remains “extremely confident” that Alberta’s small brewer grant program is trade compliant, since other provinces have liquor markets that are far more protectionist in structure and many provinces even have similar grant programs.

“The program we have designed is modelled after what other provinces have done for their breweries for decades,” Bilous said.

The CFTA will come into effect on July 1, 2017. According to the Alberta government, the province exports to the rest of Canada totalled $63 billion in 2015.

astephenson@postmedia.com

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