Colourful, aggressively marketed and bad for you unless consumed in moderation, spirits have a lot in common with breakfast cereal. And just as Trix are for American kids only, Canadian adults are denied quite a number of wonderful products, many of them taken for granted abroad. It’s the fault of our provincial booze monopolies, of course. The only remedy for now is to cross the border and spend those 96¢ loonies. Rather than filling the trunk with discount Smirnoff on your next trip to the States, I would suggest bringing home some of the alcoholic flavours you cannot buy here, as listed below.
Review the rules on alcohol importing on the Canada Border Services Agency’s website at beaware.gc.ca. The best policy is honestly declaring what you have; if you’re over the limit you’ll just have to pay taxes and duty (unless you live in Nunavut or the Northwest Territories, which restrict the amount of booze you bring into the country).
Also note: Alberta residents are advised to use the search function at alberta-liquor-guide.com before making any suitcase-stuffing plans. There’s a chance the products below are available at home. Surprise, surprise: The lone province that doesn’t put shelf-stocking decisions in the hands of bureaucrats offers a superior selection.
Adam McDowell, “Happy Hour: Making the most of cross-border booze shopping”, National Post, 2010-08-13
August 14, 2010
QotD: Canadians and booze smuggling
China’s petroleum producers make more sense than the US government
Not everybody has bought into the “ethanol as a clean alternative to petroleum” bullshit: China’s petroleum producers are asking the Chinese government to stop subsidizing the corn-to-ethanol project (similar to the US government’s subsidy program).
[. . .] to enjoy the subsidy of 1880 Yuan per ton of alcoholic gasoline for vehicles and the tax-exemption policy for the corn-to-ethanol project, some plants in China began a wave of buying corn, causing the severe shortage of corn for animal feed and the rapid increase of corn prices.
“In the first half year of this year, China imported 78 million tons of corn, mainly due to the higher domestic corn price than overseas. In July, the average corn price in northeast China was 1845 Yuan per ton, rising by 15.7% year on year” said Zhang Jianbo, a market analyst with Distribution Productivity Promotion Center of China Commerce…
Of course the US has also been criticized for this insane subsidy of corn ethanol as well and blamed for dramatic price increases in corn based products in Mexico, and South/Central America.
The bottom line is corn ethanol makes no economic sense, never did, and when the total environmental impact end-to-end from dirt farm to tailpipe is considered, its even worse than ordinary gasoline. Its always been a lose/lose proposition all the way around, and many of the environmental groups have started to cool on their enthusiasm for it as the real cost/impacts manifested themselves.
Even if you’re not a whole-hearted “green”, this kind of market-rigging by government intervention should be greeted with derision: it’s not “green” to consume more resources to produce a less energy-intensive end-product and pretend it’s a viable substitute. This is another case where the government would produce better environmental results by burning the dollar bills rather than using them to subsidize corn production for ethanol.
Business jargon got you down? Unsuck-it!
I’ve been known to print off Business Bingo cards for the inevitable business meeting jargon-fest, so I wholly support the notion behind Unsuck-it:
H/T to Xeni Jardin for the link.
