Winnipeg – August 6, 2019 – A Panel under the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) has issued its report regarding the request to ensure compliance for the decision in the Person to Government dispute between Artisan Ales Consulting Inc. and the Government of Alberta regarding beer mark-ups.
The Panel found the Province of Alberta to be in compliance with the order to remove or amend the measure in question. This compliance report can be found on the CFTA web site at: https://www.cfta-alec.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Decision-July-5-2019-signed-final.pdf.
In July 2016 Artisan Ales Consulting Inc. requested that a Person to Government proceeding be initiated in respect to an Alberta measure relating to the mark-up applied to beer imported from other Canadian provinces. In July 2017, the Panel found that Alberta’s Measures (the Mark-ups and the Alberta Small Brewers Development (ASBD) Program together) had impaired internal trade and caused injury and a denial of benefit. In June of 2018 an appellate panel upheld the determination of the Panel that the ASBD Program was inconsistent with the AIT. In January of 2019 Artisan Ales requested that the compliance panel, comprised of the original dispute panel, decide if the Government of Alberta was in compliance with the panel’s orders. Today the compliance panel publicly releases its report. The Panel was comprised of: David McKeague (Chair), Michele Veeman and Ronald Perozzo; see bios attached.
The AIT was an intergovernmental trade agreement signed by Canadian First Ministers in July 1994. Its purpose is to reduce and eliminate, to the extent possible, barriers to the free movement of persons, goods, services, and investment within Canada so as to establish an open, efficient, and stable domestic market. Access to the dispute resolution mechanisms of the AIT is open to governments, individuals and businesses. This compliance request report is the last instance in which the AIT rules will hold authority in a trade dispute. On July 1, 2017, the AIT was replaced by the Canadian Free Trade Agreement. As this dispute was brought up under the AIT rules it had to continue to be administered under those rules until its completion.
For more information on the AIT and its dispute resolution procedures, visit www.cfta-alec.ca. and/or contact: Patrick Caron, Managing Director, Internal Trade Secretariat, T: 204-987-8094 or email: pcaron@its-sci.ca
Background information attached.
Biographical Notes – Panel Members
David McKeague, Q.C., his practice focuses primarily on mergers and acquisitions, the development of business structures, corporate reorganizations, corporate and commercial law, and public offerings of securities, as well as secured transactions. He is senior Counsel to McDougall Gauley LLP. David is a Past-President of the Law Society of Saskatchewan (1990), has acted as Chair of Professional Conduct and Chair of Discipline, and has chaired and sat as a member on numerous Discipline Hearings and has also acted as an arbitrator on commercial arbitrations. He was also the Saskatchewan representative on the Federation of the Law Society Committees dealing with the Interprovincial Mobility of Lawyers between 1988 and 1994. David was a Director of Saskatchewan Government Insurance and its affiliates from February 2014, to November 24th, 2016, when he resigned due to health concerns. While a Director of SGI, he served on the Risk Management Committee.
Ron Perozzo, is a former Deputy Attorney General and Deputy Minister of Justice for the Province of Manitoba. He has also served as Manitoba’s Conflict of Interest Commissioner, Lobbyist Registrar and Information and Privacy Adjudicator. In the past Mr. Perozzo has conducted reviews of Legal Aid Manitoba, the Manitoba Crown Lands Branch and led public consultations leading to a new Manitoba Police Act. Mr Perozzo resides in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Michele Veeman, is Professor Emerita of Agricultural and Resource Economics in the Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, University of Alberta, Canada. She holds a Ph.D. degree (Agricultural Economics, University of California, Berkeley), Master Degree (Economics, University of Adelaide, South Australia) and Bachelor degree (Agricultural Science, Massey University, New Zealand). Her research, graduate student supervision and teaching focused on the economics of food, agriculture and rural resources; she has published widely in these areas. Her on-going research and publications include studies of how individuals’ risk perceptions and decisions are modified by different types of information; and the economics of food and agricultural regulation, trade disputes and related policy issues. She is a Distinguished Scholar of the Western Agricultural Economics Association, a Fellow of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society and an Honorary Life Member of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. Veeman’s international experience includes participation as a resource person and administratively in numbers of different international research, educational linkage and training programs.