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If Albertans wish to understand how an accidental government is intentionally making a poor provincial economy worse, the clearest example is the province’s attack on trade in a favourite summertime beverage: beer.

Ever since last fall, the province has sought to remedy a non-existent problem: How craft beer producers in other provinces could sell their suds in Alberta at the same tax rate as made-in-Alberta beer.

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For years, any Canadian brewer with less than 20,000 hectolitres of annual beer production could sell into the Alberta market at the same tax rate as locals: 20 cents per litre. It was a model of sensible policy. It allowed entrepreneurs with a great product to flourish regardless of their brewery’s home province.

Then, in its October budget, Alberta’s government hiked taxes and not just on carbon and corporations but on beer and in a discriminatory fashion.

The province demanded $1.25 per litre — a 525 per cent increase, on any beer brewed outside of Alberta. Saskatchewan and British Columbia brewers were exempted because of the New West Partnership, the 2010 interprovincial trade deal that sought to free up the flow of goods and services in the three westernmost provinces.