David Bond, executive director of the Association of Wine Growers of British Columbia, said in a Vancouver Sun article, “They are selling it in the B.C. wine section, and it’s atrocious. I think it’s scandalous. This is a very calculated form of consumer deception.”
He’s talking about the government and their government-owned and run liquor stores and its suppliers deceiving the citizens. (As we know, peddling booze to citizens for government profit is perfectly lovely, unlike corporate profits, and is what only liberal governments — and of course coincidentally socialist and communist governments — think is a core function of government.)
…It’s a Canada-wide strategy developed by the three major winemakers in consultation with federal and provincial governments that is supported by provincial liquor boards. The B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch displays the wines as if they were domestic products, identifying their country of origin as Canada.
It’s only in the fine print at the bottom of the back label that the wineries identify their product as being “Cellared in Canada from domestic and imported wines.”
They don’t have to contain a drop of B.C. wine under Liquor Distribution Branch regulations. They just have to be bottled in B.C.
They sell for less than the province’s home-grown wines, and in this province are offered in the “British Columbia” section of government liquor stores.
One expert even dared suggest that what the government is doing might be illegal —a contravention of the Competition Act—and said it was in any case unethical. Lindsay Meredith, a Simon Fraser University marketing expert, said customers have every right to feel they are being deceived.
Meredith said both the wineries involved and the B.C. liquor distribution branch appear to be marketing and selling a product in a manner that is misleading.
It could even be a violation of the criminal provisions of the federal Competition Act, he said. At the very least it’s unethical.
Yet the Sun puts the story on the front of the “Business” page today —section D.
.jpg "image")
Should it not be front page news when it appears clear —as even the Sun’s own experts agree —that the government and one of its biggest revenue-getting divisions is purposely deceiving its citizens (to say nothing of the now apparently not so newsworthy fact that the government is competing against its own citizens in business for profits)?
.jpg "image")
And in their finger-wagging editorial today on the same story, they scold the businesses involved and explicitly name names. The companies aren’t breaking the law. The government might be. The companies aren’t acting deceptively —they’re labeling their bottles properly —in English AND in French of course — as the government prescribed. Only the government is acting deceptively. And that’s far worse. Their own experts agreed! A drunk monkey would agree! So why are the esteemed editors of the Vancouver Sun seemingly bent on almost entirely blaming the BC wine companies and their slimy but PERFECTLY LEGAL actions, but skimming over the worse crime: the complicity of and in fact purposeful deception of its citizens by big government?
Sober minds might see a whitewash of government perfidy by a big-government-loving, reflexively anti-corporate media.
Of course as I mentioned, an equally big crime as government deception against its own people, is that the government is doing all this even as they at the same time compete against their own citizens in what the BC Liberal government must think is another core function of government, plying citizens with booze, for profit. Don’t get me wrong. I love booze. All booze. I increasingly like it the more I analyze government and media, and just sit here and think about the absurdities in front of my face.
Even if the wineries are behaving badly from a purely business PR and marketing point of view (and why in tarnation would the Sun care about that?!), when the government, which holds itself out as our everything — our omnipresent protectors and know-it-all betters— especially against those big bad corporations; and which looms over you and yearns to look after you in every facet of your lives — you and your children’s health, education, and even your baby child’s daycare (and “early learning” —wink!); and which pretends to need to regulate every private business and industry to death for our own good (but not regulate themselves!); and which hold themselves out to be the authority which always knows best and how best to spend your own dollars and to regulate YOU and license YOU all day long, that’s quite another matter.
Imagine that: the government in contravention of the Competition Act; and when the even bigger story is that it’s them who owns and runs the whole wholesale liquor purchasing and distribution monopoly, and has a near-monopoly on retail liquor sales (it’s only recently that big government allowed the private sector to compete against them—their own government —but the private stores have to get their inventory from the government stores, and only at a marginal discount from the regular retail price. Great!).
This whole thing — the whole government — is one massive violation of every tenet of “competition” and free markets, to say nothing of government respect for the people — the citizens it works for.
And if the media purposely doesn’t uncork that and reveal that in its full light, it is an abomination.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
Contact Mr. Johannesen about this article using this form. Please refer to article's title.
FOLLOW @JoelJohannesen ON X!
- Wow what a shock: a Big Government project’s cost estimate has DOUBLED — in only a few months - Tuesday April 30, 2024 at 4:50 pm
- UPDATED: State-Funding of Sports Boondoggles Need To Be Sent To The Penalty Box - Wednesday March 13, 2024 at 4:44 pm
- I’m from the government and I’m here to help you become barely mediocre like us. - Tuesday March 5, 2024 at 11:53 am
