For the Government:

• Reduced costs in resolving interpretation of standards with industry.

Negative impacts

For the beer industry:

• Small craft breweries may experience difficulty in complying with the requirements because of limited financial resources.
• Some products may not meet the modernized beer standard and will have to be sold as unstandardized alcoholic beverages and not be represented as beer.
• May have the potential to impact international trade with countries that do not have the same beer compositional standard.

For the Government:

• There will be an impact on government resources to process a small number of additional food additive applications.

Given that the brewing industry of Canada is dominated by three major multinational companies who control approximately 90% footnote8 of retail sales, these companies carry 40% of the costs. On a geographic basis, ontario carries the largest share of the costs (34%), followed by Quebec (26%) and British Columbia (13%). By sector, beer manufacturers carry most of the costs (91.4%), but provincial liquor boards, as the sole or largest distributors and retailers of beer in each of the provinces and territories, are also impacted (8.6%).