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Member of Parliament

Richard Cannings

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • NDP
  • South Okanagan—West Kootenay
  • British Columbia
  • Voting Attendance: 61%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $128,729.57

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 286 - Feb/27/24
Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)
  • Feb/27/24 6:46:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I asked in question period a couple of weeks ago about the catastrophic damage that was suffered by the wine and soft fruit sectors in the southern interior of British Columbia in the middle of January. As I have said before in this place, that region and in particular the south Okanagan makes the best wines in Canada and grows the best cherries, peaches and apricots. These sectors support the B.C. economy to the tune of $2 billion or more, providing thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in taxes. However, after a very mild winter, grapevines and fruit trees were very much in spring mode. The sap was rising. Then, on January 11, a river of Arctic air poured in from northern valleys. A friend of mine has a weather station in his orchard near Penticton and his temperature records showed a drop from 2°C to -23.5°C in just 12 hours. That temperature plunge killed essentially 100% of the buds on grapevines in the Okanagan Valley. It killed the apricot and peach buds and many of the cherry buds as well. That means there will be no harvest of grapes this year and has huge impacts on soft fruits. Whether this one-season impact of dead buds will recover next year or there will be a longer-term impact of completely dead vines and trees remains to be seen. If the plants have not survived, it would mean an expensive replant program followed by four or five years with no crops at all. For the wine industry, this crisis means, at a minimum, no white wines the next year and no red wines the year after. This is after a similar freeze in December 2022 that cut the grape harvest in half and then wildfires literally shut down the tourism to the southern interior last summer that is an essential part of the wine and soft fruit economy. Therefore, wineries and orchardists were already reeling, and fighting for survival when this even more drastic impact hit their sector. I just want to pause here to mention the cause of this sudden freeze because in normal situations, extreme Arctic temperatures are kept in the far north by the polar vortex and a strong linear jet stream that holds the southern boundary of that vortex in place. However, the polar vortex and the jet stream are driven by strong temperature differences between the frigid polar air and the milder temperate air masses. When we have increasingly frequent and increasingly strong global warming, and last year was a record breaker in all regards, that jet stream weakens and meanders in big loops and brings polar air southward and milder air northward. It was this situation that caused the abrupt temperature changes that killed the vine and fruit tree buds. What can we do to help the wineries, the vineyard owners and the orchardists survive this serious setback? There are a number of policy changes that the B.C. provincial government can make to temporarily make it possible for these sectors to get through for a year or two. The federal government can provide emergency funding through the AgriRecovery framework and the AgriStability program, but whatever that support looks like, we need to see it quickly before the sector is devastated. As well, all the winery, brewery and distillery operators in my riding and across the country are demanding that the excise tax regime be changed so the tax does not automatically increase based on inflation every year. That causes extra pain in years when the business owners are already dealing with rising costs of everything that goes into their fine products.
617 words
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