The Manitoba government announced last week a new Craft Brewers Strategy aimed at promoting and expanding the craft beer industry in the province (see announcement here). The first step in the strategy is to allow Manitoba breweries to open on-site tap rooms, a feature common in some Canadian provinces and U.S. states. They have also established an advisory committee, including representatives from the province’s three breweries, to “help to identify obstacles and explore new opportunities for Manitoba-based craft brewing”.

This announcement follows closely on the heels of a series of announcements by the Ontario government providing grants amounting to over $1 million to a number of craft breweries for capital expansion and modifications. The grants range from $27,000 to $375,000. More grants will be awarded in the coming months.

[EDITED Dec. 23 to add: Today the Manitoba government also announced the legalization of U-Brews, where consumers can brew their own beer and wine on the premises of a homebrew store. This move leaves Alberta among the last remaining provinces to prohibit the practice. Another sign of its lagging ways.]

These set of announcements bring into stark contrast the differing approaches to beer policy across provinces. While Manitoba sits down with their brewery partners to create an action plan and Ontario throws needed capital at their breweries, the Alberta government continues to trumpet privatization and hope that the market will eventually create a space for local beer production.

I realize this is a highly political issue and people will land based upon their personal ideological positions around the role of government. So I am not trying to tell people what to think. However, I do feel their is value in considering how governments can either encourage or discourage the growth of locally produced craft beer. Because, let’s be clear, inaction is a form of action – meaning even if government does nothing, it is doing something. We need to measure the consequences of what government does or does not do.

I recognize that Manitoba lags at the bottom of craft beer in Canada, with only three breweries to speak of. But I argue this announcement is a statement that they want to change that. Alberta also lags in per capita breweries, but instead of rolling up their sleeves, they happily promote the status quo.

For me the core of this is how government perceives the place of craft beer, more specifically craft beer made within the province. It is a valid pursuit to want to increase consumer choice, and so ensuring a supply of quality craft imports from around Canada and the world is a laudable policy aim. But should those import products take priority over locally produced beer? For that is the situation in Alberta, while in provinces like B.C., Ontario, Nova Scotia and now Manitoba, the government recognizes the need to create an environment that encourages, and possibly gives priority to, beer made within the borders.

Why does this matter? For one economics. Local breweries create jobs and (hopefully) profits that remain in the province, adding to the tax base. But more than that it helps in diversifying the economy and adding important value added to existing economic activity. We grow a lot of barley in Western Canada, and brewing beer here is a natural way to add value to that barley.

There are two other benefits for consumers, specifically. First, beer is at its best fresh, and beer gets no fresher thatn when it has been produced a few blocks away, or even a couple hundred kilometres. Second, the more craft breweries that populate a local region, the more competitive those breweries will be. And that means, as craft breweries are wont to do, they will compete on the basis of quality. Brewers each have to up their game if they want to stay relevant. That doesn’t happen in a region where there are only a handful of breweries. Portland, San Diego and Denver got to where they are, in part, because they have a high density of breweries competing for space.

Plus, more local breweries does not have to mean fewer imports. It could mean BETTER imports. In a competitive space, an agent can’t simply dump some overstocked beer from elsewhere; they will have to pick and choose what will sell.

I don’t have the time at the moment to discuss at length what the Alberta government could be doing on behalf of Alberta breweries.  Policies like reversing retail privatization or removing the private distribution monopoly are likely non-starters in Alberta, especially under the new ProWildConRose Party government, and others such as dedicated shelf space or import restriction are logistically impossible in the current environment (and possibly undesirable).

However the Alberta government could start with marketing assistance. Why not help promote local breweries as an asset to the province? Or why not help them lobby other provinces to create more open borders going the other way? I, for one, would not reject out of hand the idea of offering start-up or capital enhancement funding to help lower the barriers to new breweries. Obviously some other policy options, including re-visiting mark-ups to removing additional barriers to new breweries and brewery expansion should be in the cards as well.

The slate is pretty blank at the moment, meaning there is plenty to be done. Maybe the starting point is what Manitoba has done – set up an industry advisory committee to talk about what needs to be done. It might, at the very minimum, mean our government officials will actually meet our local brewing players, which makes it harder for them to be ignored.