Brewers want you to know the cold, hard truth about the price of your cold ones.

The federal government is set to increase the tax on local and imported beer by about 2 per cent starting this April. The increase will roll over every year in line with inflation — which has the brewing community up in arms.

“Obviously this is troubling because it’s going to automatically increase prices for our customers, who are already paying a 47 per cent tax rate on average across the country,” said Luke Harford, president of Beer Canada, the trade association advocating for the brewers.

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Beer Canada has launched a national campaign to get the government to scrap this tax increase. Axe the Beer Tax asks the public to sign a petition and write to their MPs voicing concerns.

“Our point is that, if they want to increase tax they should talk about it every year as opposed to hiding it in the legislation where it automatically goes up every year,” Harford added.

The group believes the hike will hurt an industry that has already seen a decline in recent years. A report published Monday by the Conference Board of Canada shows per capita consumption of beer declined by 10 per cent over the past decade. The high price is among the contributing factors, according to the report.

The report also shows beer remains a popular beverage among Canadians, comprising as much as 40 per cent of all alcohol sales. Beer also generates some $5.7 billion in annual tax revenues, the report says.

According to a Ministry of Finance spokesperson, “The annual inflationary adjustment will provide alcohol producers with greater certainty in the future and is in line with actions taken by many provinces.” The ministry added that the 2-per-cent increase amounts to a nickel on the cost of a case of beer and that “the last effective increase . . . was over 30 years ago.”

Harford said the new increase could be especially harmful to local brewers whose industry is the main driver of the market.

“Right now, 85 per cent of beer sold in Canada is made in Canada. That’s a large beer-making footprint, and we want to hold onto that,” he said. “Driving the price up because of these tax increases is going to have a knock-on effect on our ability to make and sell good beer.”

“Brewers are going to be left with less money to invest in their plants, their people and their communities — and that’s not a good thing either,” he added.

Beer Canada officially launched its campaign Monday, asking suds-loving Canadians to sign a petition requesting that Finance Minister Bill Morneau axe the escalating beer tax. The petition, which the group started sharing several weeks ago via its social media channels, collected 15,400 signatures as of Tuesday morning, according to the association.

In last year’s federal budget, the Liberal government increased the excise duty rates on alcohol products, including beer, by two per cent, Finance Ministry spokesperson Chloe Luciani-Girouard said in an email. That amounts to about a nickel per 24-bottle case of beer, she said.

At the time, the government also announced it would annually adjust the tax by indexing it to the consumer price index with the first inflationary adjustment coming this April.

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Luciani-Girouard said small Canadian brewers are charged decreased rates on the first 7.5 million litres of beer.

“The annual inflationary adjustment will provide alcohol producers with greater certainty in the future and is in line with actions taken by many provinces,” she said.

But Beer Canada wonders how the 50 brewers it represents will manage these yearly tax bumps.

“When we have this built in every year, it’s really making it, you know, difficult to operate,” said Dave Fenn, co-owner of Howe Sound Brewing in Squamish, B.C., which is a Beer Canada member.

Already, federal, provincial and municipal taxes on beer products are high, according to Beer Canada, which estimates 47 per cent of the current price of beer in Canada is tax — a figure Fenn said reflects his brewery’s pricing.

The sector’s also been hit by other pressures, Fenn said, like high material and energy costs, and increasing labour costs.

Any additional tax really squeezes breweries, he said, as many products are priced at their ceiling.

In the first year, some brewers may be able to absorb the cost, Fenn said, but they’ll soon be looking at making small price increases or reducing production costs by decreasing labour or increasing automation.

Rising prices likely contribute to why people in Canada are drinking less, according to Beer Canada.

Between 2012 and 2016, per capita beer consumption decreased 7.55 per cent from 83.4 litres to 77.1 litres, according to the industry group’s figures.

With files from The Canadian Press