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Restaurants Canada is calling for the Government of Saskatchewan to re-think its policy on banning U.S. alcohol.
Mark von Schellwitz, vice president of Western Canada at Restaurants Canada, said the policy ban could have an unintended boomerang effect on Saskatchewan’s economy since some of the banned liquor with U.S. labels is manufactured in Canada, such as Bud Light, Coors Light, Budweiser and Michelob Lite.
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“We supported the ban of U.S. made products off liquor store shelves and many of our members have discontinued selling those products, even if they have them in inventory but what this does is actually takes it a step too far…now you’re talking about Canadian made-product, Canadian-made beer,” he said on Friday.
“It really doesn’t make any sense to start banning Canadian-made products from liquor store shelves and there’s over 50 brands included here — some of them are the most popular brands in our restaurants.”
Von Schellwitz said beer accounts for 50 per cent of restaurant alcohol sales and is generally one of the most profitable items on menus.
In early March, the Government of Saskatchewan announced that would it would stop purchasing U.S. liquor in response to U.S. tariffs on Canadian products.
Von Schellwitz said this is coming at an unfortunate time for the industry.
“The restaurant industry has been struggling. We’ve got over half of our members not making any money, we’ve had huge operating cost increases, Saskatchewanians are sort of holding on to their money a little bit more. There’s less disposable income,” he said.
“This really will just hurt local Saskatchewan businesses. It’ll hurt farmers and it’ll hurt all those people that are making these Canadian-made products. The intent of these types of decisions is to send a message to the United States. It’s not to hurt Canadian workers and Canadian businesses.”
Alana Ross, Minister Responsible for Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority, defended the decision to include some of the aforementioned brands.
“What we did is we put together a list that showed all of the traditional American brands, and in order to have more impact with the tariffs that we are currently facing, we made the decision to stop ordering all of those brands to have more of an impact and hopefully shorten the amount of times we’re going to have to deal with these tariffs,” Ross said.
According to Restaurants Canada, there are 2,913 food service businesses in Saskatchewan, supporting approximately 38,900 jobs.
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