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I’m sorry, but this is no time for panic; it’s a time for celebration and hope, and, most fittingly, raising a glass.

Reporters keep asking me whether I think Friday’s ground-breaking court ruling, which threw out the charges against Gerard Comeau for bringing Quebec liquor into New Brunswick, will result in a free-for-all. Will New Brunswickers now haul as much beer and wine as their hearts desire from the rest of the country into their home province? The answer is, of course, that they will — and that’s exactly what the Fathers of Confederation would have wanted.

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But most Canadians aren’t interested in precisely how many more six packs will now be flowing through New Brunswick’s borders. They want to know what the Comeau decision means for them. They want to know whether there will be a lasting and far-reaching impact from one brave Maritimer’s constitutional challenge. And so, as the executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF), the organization that supported Comeau’s case, I’d like to answer that.