N.S. wine growers walk away from government support talks [Video]

HALIFAX –

The working group examining support for Nova Scotia’s wine industry has lost its co-chair, who resigned this week calling talks with the provincial government an “enormous disappointment.”

Premier Tim Houston created the industry working group last spring after he paused a contentious subsidy program for two commercial wine bottlers in response to outcry from wine growers who said the aid would undercut their operations.

In a resignation letter sent to Houston on Monday, Karl Coutinho, board chair of Wine Growers Nova Scotia, said government proposals presented at a meeting last week left farmers feeling “discouraged, disheartened and disillusioned.”

Calling the meeting “an enormous disappointment,” Coutinho wrote, “After eight months of discussion the government presented the group with proposals that were incomplete and had the appearance of being written on the back of a napkin.”

He described senior bureaucrats as seeming “distant, unprepared and borderline hostile.”

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