Media personality Terry Mulligan ready for charges over wine importation

Terry David Mulligan, shown here with a glass of red in B.C.'s Okanagan.Photograph by: Submitted, PNG

A Prohibition-era law restricting wine importation across provincial boundaries is under fire as a well-known B.C. broadcaster is planning to partake in civil disobedience to get it struck down.

Terry David Mulligan has announced that on May 13 he will challenge the law by taking B.C. wine to Alberta.

“The liquor people are just bullies,” Mulligan told The Province on Tuesday.

“If a winery has the audacity to stand up and question their law, the winery will find their bottles pulled from the shelves [of government liquor stores].”

Mulligan, who produces and hosts the show Tasting Room Radio, said he decided to take a stand at a “wine summit” during the annual Vancouver wine festival four weeks ago, which was convened to strategize how best to get the law repealed.

“There were maybe 200 people in that room,” he said. Winemakers in attendance expressed fears that they would face serious repercussions if they challenged the law, he said.

“Nobody has ever challenged this law, I’m going to challenge this law. Somebody has to do it.

“Because I don’t have connections to any one winery, they can’t beat up on a winery, so they can just beat up on me,” he said.

Mulligan said on May 13 he will be at the B.C.-Alberta border to transport a bottle of B.C. wine across the line, then bring a bottle of Ontario-made wine back to B.C.

He plans to notify the nearest RCMP detachment of his actions in the hope that police will attend.

“I will say, ‘Charge me.’ Charge me in a court of law in Canada and let’s see where we go with this,” said Mulligan.

“It’s killing the small, boutique wineries that everybody likes to find,” added Mulligan.

“It is a crass cash grab by [liquor control boards].”

The Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act, first passed in 1928 to restrict bootlegging, makes it a crime to transport wine bought in one province to another province without going through the second province’s liquor control board.

“The law is completely outdated and it’s decades past time to reform it,” said Mark Hicken, a Vancouver trust and estates lawyer who dabbles in wine law.

“It was introduced in the post-Prohibition era to prevent the interprovincial bootlegging traffic between provinces that had ended Prohibition at different times.

“Now, it’s used purely as a measure to support provincial liquor monopolies in their quest to extract as many dollars as they can out of consumers,” Hicken told The Province on Tuesday.

“[The law] is really detrimental to both consumers and to the development of the wine industry,” said Hicken.

“If you had a law like this in France, it would be illegal to ship wine from Burgundy to Bordeaux.

“I don’t think we can have a serious wine culture in Canada until we can fix things like this,” said Hicken.

Kelowna-area MP Ron Cannan crafted a private member’s bill in the last parliament to allow wine lovers to buy freely from out-of-province wineries, without jumping through a variety of costly hoops, but it withered on the vine.

Under the current scheme, wine may be purchased through liquor boards, but shipping takes about three weeks.