New BrunswickA briefing note shows worrying projections for N.B. Liquor due to new rules that raise the limit on how much booze people can import into the province, but the minister responsible for interprovincial trade says the tradeoff will be worth it.New Brunswick dropped long-standing limits on how much alcohol people can bring back from another provinceSilas Brown · CBC News · Posted: Sep 17, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: September 17New Brunswick’s Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Jean-Claude D’Amours says the changes to alcohol rules were not rushed and part of a broader national effort to lift interprovincial trade barriers. (Silas Brown/CBC News)Eased restrictions on alcohol imports are expected to take a bite out of New Brunswick Liquor’s sales, despite what officials previously told CBC News. Earlier this year New Brunswick dropped its restrictions on the amount of alcohol people can bring into the province for personal use as part of its efforts to eliminate interprovincial trade barriers. It also paved the way for consumers to purchase alcohol directly from some producers in other provinces.In a briefing note from April, obtained through a right to information request, staff said the change is expected to hit N.B. Liquor’s bottom line. “The New Brunswick Liquor Corporation (ANBL) expects a negative impact on sales from the removal of personal exemption limits, however it is not feasible to accurately predict the amount of this impact,” wrote a staffer with the Department of Justice and Public Safety.That’s different from what the minister of intergovernmental affairs and the CEO of N.B. Liquor told CBC News in July. Back then Jean-Claude D’Amours, who is from the Quebec-adjacent Madawaska region, said he didn’t think the change would spur people to load up on cheaper Quebec beer. And N.B. Liquor CEO Lori Stickles said in a statement that she didn’t expect “any changes to our business or our strategy.” WATCH | N.B. Liquor “expects negative impact on sales” with new alcohol rules: Documents show new booze rules expected to hurt N.B. LiquorInternal documents show the government is expecting N.B. Liquor to take a financial hit after rules limiting the amount of alcohol that can be brought into the province were dropped. In a new statement, a spokesperson for N.B. Liquor acknowledged they do expect to see some impacts from the changes. “ANBL does not believe that the impact of the change will be significant enough to warrant any process or strategy changes to our operations. That said, naturally there could be some financial impacts,” Florence Gouton said in an email.N.B. Liquor brought in $189.6 million to provincial coffers last fiscal year. It’s expected to turn a profit of $180 million this year. The right to information request was filed by the opposition Progressive Conservatives. Interim leader Glen Savoie said the documents show the changes were not fully thought out before being implemented. “It’s sort of a leap-before-you-look kind of approach and they don’t consider the outcomes completely before,” Savoie said in an interview. “But it was the topic de jour. It was the hot thing to do, it was the popular thing to do, and so they went ahead and did it.”Now we’re seeing again clearly spoken through internal documents that this will negatively impact New Brunswick Liquor sales and therefore government of New Brunswick revenues.”It’s not uncommon to see a number of New Brunswick licence plates outside of a liquor store only 700 metres from the border. (Silas Brown / CBC News)D’Amours disagrees. He says the changes weren’t rushed and stemmed from meetings with his provincial and federal counterparts in January. “The elimination of the personal limit is not something new. It was in the media and in court for years,” D’Amours said.”It was a fair evaluation of what was important for us as a province and we decided to do it, to make it happen in New Brunswick.”Even if there is an impact on sales at N.B. Liquor stores in communities within a stone’s throw of the Quebec border, D’Amours said the changes that will soon allow producers to sell directly to consumers in other provinces will create benefits of their own.”There are many elements that may create the positive or the negative numbers at the end of the year,” he said.”We know that, as an example, direct to consumer: it’s not only people from New Brunswick that will benefit to be able to buy elsewhere in the country, but also it’s to our local producers being able to sell to the rest of the country.”An executive summary prepared for the changes to the Liquor Control Act in March also addresses what’s been a point of curiosity for years.It says that limits on personal importation haven’t been enforced for years and speculates that many have been ignoring the rules that the province went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to defend. “It is strongly suspected that many living near a provincial border are either unaware of or ignoring the personal exemption limits,” the summary says. Interim PC leader Glen Savoie says it’s clear the changes were not well thought out by the Holt government. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)Documents also show the changes were implemented quickly. The proposal was first raised by Mike Comeau, deputy minister of justice and public safety, on Feb. 8. In an email to the policy and legislative affairs branch, Comeau asked to add two proposals for the upcoming spring sitting of the legislature. “This one is a quick hit in the current effort to remove barriers to interprovincial trade,” he wrote. “I throw it on the table now expecting it will become of high interest in the next [two to three] weeks.”First reading of the changes took place just over a month later, on March 19. The bill later required four amendments to deal with unintended consequences of the initial wording. One of those amendments corrected overly broad wording that would have allowed all out-of-province retailers to sell directly to consumers, rather than just microbreweries, distilleries and wineries in provinces that have also agreed to drop their own restrictions. Another clarified when certain parts of the bill would take effect.Confusion over what parts of the bill would be in force when persisted until July. A press release on July 7 said that the removal of personal exemptions would take place when the bill was proclaimed. Emails show that a senior policy advisor had to clarify that those changes had actually been in effect since the bill received royal assent, a whole month prior. A revised version of the press release was circulated on July 9. ABOUT THE AUTHORSilas Brown is a Fredericton-based video journalist. You can reach him at silas.brown@cbc.ca.
Documents show new alcohol rules are expected to hit N.B. Liquor’s bottom line
