Craft distillers snubbed by government
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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.”
