Craft distillers snubbed by government
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rallied Canadian companies with a war time like plea to retool and start producing personal protective equipment and supplies.
Hand sanitizer was one of the first items that became scarce on store shelves and was badly needed by health care workers and other frontline emergency workers.
Among the first to answer the call were craft distilleries including Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery.
“We lobbied government to get the rules relaxed so we could start producing hand sanitizer and not be penalized,” Tyler Dyck, CEO of Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery and president of the Craft Distillers Guild of B.C. told Vernon Matters. “We were also given assurances that the cost of bottles and labels would be covered, none of that ever happened. We were told these things take time, that they were working on it. The government was outright lying to us for the last six to nine months.”
Okanagan Spirits, a relatively small family operation has donated over $500,000 in product, much of it to government funded agencies like the RCMP, hospitals and B.C. Ambulance Service.
“The most frustrating thing isn’t that the government didn’t follow through. I’m not surprised that didn’t happen, but to find out millions of dollars was given to multi-national and off-shore companies is a real kick in the pants,” Dyck said. “There was capacity here to meet demand, but instead over $250 million was paid to a Chinese electric car company to import sanitizer. Lots of sanitizers were recalled, but none that were made in Canada.”
One Vancouver distillery did get a large order initially, but then the province switched to a federal supplier.
“Our family did this because we felt it was the right thing to do,” Dyck said. “The companies that got the money were not there in the beginning, they were waiting for big fat cheques. How do you expect companies like ours to react the next time we are called upon in a crisis?”
Okanagan Spirits continues to supply frontline workers with hand sanitizer for free.