🇨🇦 Canada can’t trade with itself

An $11,300 mead order from Nova Scotia magically became $25,000 once New Brunswick’s liquor bureaucracy got its cut. That is a 100-plus per cent markup inside the same country, not across an ocean, not through a hostile border, but between two Maritime provinces pretending to be in a federation. As reported, the Shediac Renaissance Faire had to slash its order from nearly 600 bottles to 240 because ANBL decided Crown middlemen and protectionist fees matter more than commerce.

This is the real Canadian model after a decade of managerial liberalism: endless sermons about free trade, resilience and Team Canada while petty provincial monopolies choke small producers and jack up prices for locals. ANBL even admitted fees would be lower for a New Brunswick maker because its mandate is to prop up in-province producers. So much for the sacred internal market Dominic LeBlanc supposedly oversees. Tim Houston is right to call it foolishness, but it is more than that. It is a country so overregulated and bureaucratized it cannot even move honey wine without a state toll booth.

🍁 Maple Chronicles