---
title: "Direct-to-Consumer Alcohol in Canada: What an Alberta Distillery Can Actually Do Now"
description: "Nine provinces signed the direct-to-consumer alcohol deal on July 21, 2026. Where an Alberta distillery can ship, what each charges, and what its store needs."
url: https://fifteenthmeridian.com/blog/direct-to-consumer-alcohol-canada-2026
---
[Back to Blog](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/blog)

Beverage · Direct-to-Consumer

September 18, 2026

18 min read

By [Grayson Dyck](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/authors/grayson-dyck)

# Direct-to-Consumer Alcohol in Canada: What an Alberta Distillery Can Actually Do Now

**The short answer.** On July 21, 2026, nine premiers signed the operating agreement for shipping alcohol from a licensed producer to a customer's door in another province. Producers only, personal use only, and the destination province writes the rules and can take a cut.

For an Alberta distillery, seven provinces will take a spirit today. Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick ask for no authorization and publish no markup. Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador approve you first, then take their share: 30.75% of the basic price in Ontario, 30% of the price in Newfoundland and Labrador, 5% in Nova Scotia. British Columbia takes spirits from February 2027, Quebec and Yukon have not signed, and the Northwest Territories and Nunavut stayed out.

Below: what each province charges, and what the online store has to handle before the first parcel leaves.

We build and run online stores for Alberta spirits brands, so this agreement landed as a practical question: which provinces can be switched on at checkout, and what has to be true before they are. This post is the answer as of its publication date, with each rule tied to the government or liquor board document it came from, and to the board's own words to a reporter where that is all there is. It is not legal advice, and the fee schedules change on their own timetables, so check the source before you set a price.

The producers themselves were glad and wary in the same breath. "It's been very difficult for Canadian producers to access other provinces," Eau Claire Distillery's David Farran told CBC Calgary that week; his distillery has listings in 15 US states. Bryce Parsons of True Wild Distillery, president of the Alberta Craft Distillers Association, put the frustration plainly: "The easiest markets are within our own country, and that's always still been a problem or a big hurdle here for the last year and a half." The reason it matters now is the border. The United States put an additional 50% duty on Canadian spirits, wine and beer on August 22, 2026, and a second proclamation on September 8 is scheduled to shut Canadian spirits, wine and beer out of the US altogether from September 29. For a distillery that has been selling south, the seven provinces now open to it are suddenly the growth market.

## Where an Alberta distillery can ship, province by province

Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) tells Alberta manufacturers to check with each destination province's regulator before selling there, and a December 2024 amendment to its Liquor Manufacturer Handbook makes the licensee responsible for following that province's reporting and fee process. Here is what each province's own documents support.

Shipping spirits from Alberta to a household in

Ontario apply first, 30.75% markup

Newfoundland and Labrador apply first, 30% markup

Nova Scotia apply first, 5% charge

Prince Edward Island apply first, fee not public

New Brunswick open, no markup published

Saskatchewan open, no markup published

Manitoba open, no markup published

British Columbia not until February 2027

Quebec, Yukon not signed

Northwest Territories, Nunavut declined

### Ontario

Ontario is the biggest prize and the best documented. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) opened its Out of Province Direct-to-Consumer Sales Authorization to producers from the other eight provinces on July 24, 2026, and its supplier site, doingbusinesswithlcbo.com, says applications can take up to three weeks. Ontario also applies harmonized sales tax (HST) to the sale. An authorized producer pays "the applicable LCBO markup on the basic price (excluding shipping costs, container deposits, and HST)" on every bottle sold to an Ontarian. The LCBO's distillery reporting template sets that markup at 30.75% for spirits above 18% alcohol, 25% between 7.1% and 18%, and 20% at or below 7.1%. On top of it sit HST and the Ontario container deposit of 10 or 20 cents. Reports and payments are quarterly, a nil report is required in a quiet quarter, and late filers can be penalized or suspended. Buyers must be 19, and the producer handles the order, the payment and the delivery. For 100% Canadian wine the markup is zero, so a winery calls Ontario open and a distillery should call it expensive.

One 750 mL bottle of 40% whisky sold to an Ontarian at a $60 basic price

LCBO markup, 30.75% of the basic price $18.45

Ontario container deposit 10 or 20 cents

HST on what the customer pays 13%

Federal excise, already paid at bottling $4.24

Left of the $60 if you absorb the markup $41.55

Basic price if you pass it on, before HST, deposit and shipping $78.45

30.75%

LCBO markup on the basic price of every spirit sold direct to an Ontarian (LCBO distillery reporting template, 2026)

### Newfoundland and Labrador

Nearly as thorough. The Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Corporation (NLC) published its [2026 authorization guidelines](https://nlliquorcorp.com/files/Doing%20Business/Direct-To-Consumer/NLC%20-%20DTC%20Authorization%20Guidelines%202026.pdf). They require the product to be listed and approved in its home province, and they require the producer to build NLC's markup into the price and collect it: 30% for spirits, 25% for wine, cider and ready-to-drink, 20% for beer. They also set a social reference price floor. A spirit between 35% and 45% alcohol cannot retail below $34.47 a litre, deposit and HST included, shipping excluded, which puts a 750 mL bottle at $25.85 or more. Authorized producers file quarterly reports and payments with interest on late ones, collect container deposits, verify age at delivery, and may not ship into the province's prohibited communities, Natuashish among them. Newfoundland and Labrador is also the only signatory that bars a producer from shipping another producer's bottles alongside its own.

### Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia requires a Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation (NSLC) authorization, and [the province's release on signing day](https://news.novascotia.ca/en/2026/07/21/nova-scotia-signs-direct-consumer-alcohol-sales-deal) said applications from the other provinces opened on July 21, 2026, with buyers 19 or older. The charge is 5%, but the base is unsettled. The NSLC told CBC in August that it is calculated on "deemed producer cost, not the retail cost," while a wine-law summary describes it as 5% of retail sales, so confirm the base before you price. Reporting is quarterly. This is the one destination with a published count: CBC reported that by late April 2026, ten months into the earlier Ontario-Nova Scotia deal, 24 Ontario producers, including three distilleries, had been approved to sell direct to Nova Scotians.

### Prince Edward Island

Prince Edward Island lists Alberta among the six provinces reciprocating with it, alongside Manitoba, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan. An out-of-province producer completes and signs the [PEI Liquor Control Commission's direct-to-consumer request form](https://liquorpei.com/direct-to-consumer/), giving its licensing jurisdiction and licence number and undertaking to file quarterly reports and remittances, to register with Encorp Atlantic for the container recycling fee, and to respect the commission's social reference prices. Once authorized, it is listed on the commission's page, where customers are told to buy from the producer directly. Nine producers were listed in mid-September 2026, three of them spirits makers. The fee amounts are not published.

### New Brunswick

New Brunswick handled it in law rather than in a program. Section 134(4) of its [Liquor Control Act](https://laws.gnb.ca/en/showfulldoc/cs/L-10/) lets a consumer import, for home consumption, liquor bought from a manufacturer in a prescribed province and shipped directly. The 2025 amendment to the general regulation prescribes Alberta, along with Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, BC, PEI, Saskatchewan and Yukon. No authorization and no markup appear in those provisions, and the agreement's own schedule lists New Brunswick as "No Authorization Required."

### Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan did the same in June. An amendment to its [Alcohol Control Regulations](https://publications.saskatchewan.ca/api/v1/products/82497/formats/94735/download), in force since June 12, 2026, lets any adult "purchase and receive into Saskatchewan, from any other part of Canada, beverage alcohol for personal consumption" bought directly from a licensed Canadian manufacturer. The same amendment repealed the old per-bottle levy regime that applied to BC shipments. No authorization, no published markup, no quantity limit in the regulation.

### Manitoba

Manitoba is the third "No Authorization Required" province in the schedule and was fully open before July 21; we found no markup published for it, and the federal minister singled it out with New Brunswick in May for being fully open. It is also the only open destination where the buyer can be 18.

### British Columbia

British Columbia today accepts direct shipments of [100% Canadian wine only](https://www.bcldb.com/about/faq). The premiers' statement commits it to a system for every category in February 2027, run by the BC Liquor Distribution Branch under an out-of-province authorization that does not exist yet. Until it does, an Alberta whisky cannot be shipped to a BC household under this agreement.

### Quebec, Yukon and the territories

Quebec and Yukon signed the 2025 memorandum and say they intend to join. Quebec's current government has said it plans to table the legal changes in late fall or early winter. The province votes on October 5, so that plan belongs to whoever wins. Yukon's own guidance to consumers says ordering from a producer its liquor board has not licensed is not allowed. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut did not sign, citing communities with their own alcohol restrictions.

One more thing the fee tables do not show. Registering with a destination board creates a standing obligation: reports on a schedule, payments on a schedule, deposits collected and remitted, and in Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador a nil return when nothing sold. Sign up for the provinces you will actually ship to, not all of them.

## What the store has to do before the first parcel

This is the part we get hired for, and it is where most of the mistakes will happen, because the rules are per province and a standard checkout does not know that.

### Only what you actually made here

The agreement's home-province rule has teeth for whisky. Article 2.3 says a product does not count as manufactured in the origin province if the producer "is solely engaged in the bottling of that Beverage Alcohol" and it was otherwise made elsewhere. A spirit distilled outside Alberta and only bottled here is outside the channel everywhere. Spirit distilled in Alberta by another licensee still counts as Alberta-made under article 2.2, though Newfoundland and Labrador will not accept another producer's product from you, so check that one before you tag it. The agreement also requires the product to be one you are permitted to sell at home, and Newfoundland and Labrador wants it listed and approved there. Tag the eligible products in the catalogue before you open a single province, so an imported release cannot slip into a cross-border cart.

### Gate by destination, not by country

The shipping address decides everything. The store needs a ship-to rule per province: Saskatchewan yes, British Columbia no for spirits until 2027, Quebec no, the territories no. That is a shipping-zone configuration, not a note in the FAQ, and it has to fail cleanly at checkout with a sentence that says why. An order accepted for a province you are not authorized in is a compliance problem, not a customer-service one.

### Age at the door, and at checkout

Every open destination sets a minimum age of 19 except Manitoba, which allows 18. Alberta itself is 18. Checkout needs an age attestation, and the carrier needs an adult-signature service on every alcohol parcel.

### A carrier that will take alcohol, and a second one

[Canada Post](https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/support/articles/non-mailable-matter/intoxicating-beverages.page) carries alcohol within Canada only for parcel-contract customers and Solutions for Small Business cardholders. It requires its Proof of Age signature option, caps containers at five litres and 70% alcohol, and puts the legal compliance of every shipment on the sender. [The Globe and Mail's reporting](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/article-canada-post-strike-alcohol-wineries-breweries-trade-barriers/) during the fall 2025 postal strike put one cidery's six-bottle Ontario shipment at about $35 by Canada Post against about $67 by Purolator. A Nova Scotia brewer said most other couriers "don't have the systems in place," and that it had lost tens of thousands of dollars in sales the last time the mail stopped, in December 2024. One carrier is a single point of failure; have a second one priced before you need it.

### Price the province, not the product

A bottle cannot have one price everywhere once destinations add their own fees. Ontario wants 30.75% of the basic price on a spirit. Newfoundland and Labrador wants its 30% markup inside the price you charge, and its floor means a 750 mL bottle of standard-strength spirit cannot go out below $25.85 with deposit and HST included. Build province-level pricing or province-level surcharges into the store and show the customer the landed figure before they pay. A surprise at checkout is where alcohol orders die.

### Tax, deposit and the paperwork trail

Sales tax follows the destination, and Saskatchewan and Manitoba run their own provincial sales tax with its own registration, so ask your accountant before the first order there. Container deposits follow the destination too, and each board wants its report on its own calendar: quarterly for Ontario, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, with a nil return required in Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador when nothing sold. The store's order export needs the ship-to province, litres shipped, alcohol category and container count on every line, so that a report is a filter and a sum rather than an afternoon. Federal excise duty is unchanged by any of this. It has been [$14.117 per litre of absolute alcohol since April 1, 2026](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/technical-information/excise-duty/excise-duty-notices/edn104-adjusted-rates-excise-duty-spirits-wine-effective-april-1-2026), about $4.24 on a 750 mL bottle at 40%, and it falls due when the spirit is packaged, or when it leaves the excise warehouse, wherever the bottle ends up. Every destination markup sits on top of it.

### Keep the customer

The whole reason to do this is that a person in Moncton who tasted your rye on a trip can buy it again without you first winning a listing at their liquor board. That only works if the store captures the customer's email, the province and the product at the first order and you are allowed to write to them afterwards. Ask for marketing consent at checkout as its own unticked box, separate from the age attestation, and segment the list by province from day one, because the next release can only be sold where you are authorized.

Before the first parcel

Tag the products you made here, not the sourced ones one afternoon

Pick the provinces you will actually ship to two or three to start

Apply where a board must approve you first: Ontario, Nova Scotia, PEI, Newfoundland and Labrador up to three weeks

A ship-to rule per province, with a clean refusal at checkout a shipping-zone setting

Age attestation at checkout, adult signature with the carrier one setting, one contract

A price or surcharge per destination, shown before payment per province

Order export with province, litres, category and container count four columns

Marketing consent as its own box, list split by province day one

## What was signed, and what it is not

The document is the [Operating Agreement on Direct-to-Consumer Sales of Alcoholic Beverages](https://www.cfta-alec.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Operating-Agreement-Direct-to-Consumer-Sales-of-Alcoholic-Beverages-July-21-2026.pdf), [signed in Charlottetown on July 21, 2026](https://www.cfta-alec.ca/premiers-sign-final-agreement-towards-canada-wide-direct-to-consumer-alcohol-sales), by Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. Ottawa's side was done years ago: since 2019 the federal ban covers only liquor coming from outside Canada, and the barrier was always provincial. A 2025 memorandum set a May 2026 target that came and went with only Manitoba and New Brunswick fully open, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc told the rest in [a May 29, 2026, statement](https://www.canada.ca/en/intergovernmental-affairs/news/2026/05/statement-from-minister-leblanc-urging-provinces-and-territories-to-follow-through-on-commitment-to-implement-direct-to-consumer-alcohol-sales) that "it's time to deliver," and less than two months later the premiers signed. Read it knowing what it is: a framework whose article 15.1 says it "does not create any legal obligations or enforceable rights," with no deadlines in it. That is why each province is moving at its own speed.

Three limits define the whole thing. First, it is producer to consumer. A distillery can sell to a person in Halifax. Under this agreement it cannot sell to a bar or a store in Halifax, and Halifax retailers cannot order from it; that still runs through the NSLC. The retail side is still a liquor board listing, province by province, and Alberta is already pushing to change that. Two days after the signing, Alberta's minister of Service Alberta and red tape reduction, Dale Nally, told The Canadian Press that "for many Alberta producers, it's easier to get into the U.S. and into Japan than it is into other provinces, and that's wrong." An out-of-province product reaches Alberta shelves in three weeks, he added, while an Alberta producer can spend up to two years trying to get into BC or Ontario. The same report's review of provincial shelves put in-province product at about 85% of shelf stock at the LCBO, 60% in Manitoba and 40% in Alberta. BC's answer was that it has no plans for a direct-to-retailer system.

Second, it is for personal use, and the product has to be made in the producer's home province. Third, the destination province writes the rules. Articles 5 and 6 let it set a minimum age and verify it, set a floor price, ban shipments into dry regions, require an authorization from its liquor board, and charge fees, markups and taxes that the producer collects and remits. That is why the useful version of this post is a province-by-province list, not a summary.

## What Alberta charges producers shipping in

Alberta's inbound program is the one we can describe most precisely, because [AGLC publishes the program rules](https://aglc.ca/liquor/about-liquor/alberta-direct-consumer-dtc-liquor-program). Any out-of-province manufacturer must be approved by AGLC before shipping to an Albertan. Applications opened on July 21, 2026. Onboarding means signing an agreement with AGLC and being set up on its payment system. Approved producers file a monthly report of their shipments, and AGLC collects the administrative fee, goods and services tax (GST), container deposit and recycling amounts on each sale.

The administrative fee is not a token amount. The [direct-to-consumer (DTC) fee schedule](https://aglc.ca/sites/aglc.ca/files/aglc_files/DTC%20Fee%20Schedule%20(July%202026).pdf), effective April 1, 2026, and updated in July, sets the same per-litre rates as Alberta's standard liquor markup: $13.76 a litre on spirits between 22% and 60% alcohol, $20.16 above 60%, $4.69 on table wine, $1.25 on ordinary beer. On a 750 mL bottle of 40% whisky that is $10.32 before GST and deposit. An Ontario distillery shipping into Alberta pays the same per-litre rate as Alberta's standard markup on a bottle sold through the provincial system, which is the point: the province treats the sale as if it had gone through the system.

The BC wine program that came before it is the best evidence of what to expect. BC wineries had shipped to Albertans for years in a grey zone that AGLC said was never permitted. AGLC sent cease-and-desist letters to 106 of them in January 2024, the two premiers announced a truce that July, and fee-paying shipments resumed in January 2025. [AGLC's 2024-25 annual report](https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/cac9b047-8bd4-4b0b-84f8-ca00141bb685/resource/287d0322-5f73-4852-87e0-d0d8aa7e4960/download/aglc-annual-report-2024-2025.pdf) says that as of March 2025 more than 52,500 bottles had been purchased under the program, generating over $159,000 in net revenue to the province. When Alberta raised the wine fee that April, BC wineries told CBC their Alberta direct sales fell by 30% to 50%. AGLC's list of approved participants, updated July 24, 2026, ran to 92 producers, every one of them a BC winery; the spirits side of the inbound program was days old at that point. For an Alberta producer the inbound rules matter mostly as a template, because the provinces that do charge a fee have built theirs the same way.

## A note on scale

Direct-to-consumer will not replace a listing. The BC-to-Alberta wine program moved over 52,500 bottles in its first three months, and the one spirits route with a published count, Ontario into Nova Scotia, had three distilleries approved ten months in. What the channel does is give a small producer a repeatable way to sell to the customers it has already earned, in provinces where it has no distribution, at a margin the store controls after the province takes its fee. For most Alberta distilleries that is a second channel measured in cases, not pallets, and it is the one channel whose customer data belongs to the brand.

## Frequently asked questions

### Can an Alberta distillery ship whisky to customers in Ontario now?

Yes, once the distillery holds the Liquor Control Board of Ontario's (LCBO) Out of Province Direct-to-Consumer Sales Authorization, which opened to producers from the other provinces on July 24, 2026, and takes up to three weeks to process. The producer then pays the LCBO markup on the basic price, 30.75% for spirits above 18% alcohol, plus harmonized sales tax and container deposit, and files quarterly reports.

### Which provinces can an Alberta distillery ship to without a liquor board authorization?

Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick. Each changed its law or regulation so an adult can buy direct from a licensed Canadian manufacturer and have it shipped home, none requires the producer to register with its liquor board, and none publishes a markup. Manitoba's minimum age is 18, the other two are 19. The boards publish little and pages change, so check each province's page before the first shipment.

### Can an Alberta distillery ship to British Columbia?

Not spirits, not yet. British Columbia currently accepts direct shipments of 100% Canadian wine only and has committed to a direct-to-consumer system for all alcohol categories in February 2027. Until that system launches, an Alberta whisky cannot be shipped to a BC household under the agreement.

### Is Quebec part of the direct-to-consumer agreement?

No. Quebec signed the 2025 memorandum of understanding but did not sign the July 21, 2026, operating agreement, and the premiers' release says Quebec and Yukon both aim to sign on in the near future. Until they do, a producer cannot ship direct to a Quebec or Yukon household under the agreement.

### Does the agreement let bars or retailers in other provinces buy direct?

No. The direct-to-consumer agreement covers sales from a licensed producer to an individual for personal use only. Selling to a bar, restaurant or retailer in another province still runs through that province's liquor board, which is why Alberta's minister was asking the other provinces for retail access within days of the signing.

### What does Alberta charge on alcohol shipped in from other provinces?

Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) collects an administrative fee at the same per-litre rates as Alberta's standard liquor markup: $13.76 a litre on spirits between 22% and 60% alcohol, $4.69 on wine at or below 16%, and $1.25 on beer at or below 11.9%. Goods and services tax, container deposit and recycling fees are added. Producers must be approved by AGLC first and file a monthly shipment report.

## Related reading

- [The Canada-US alcohol trade dispute: timeline and current status](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/blog/canada-us-alcohol-trade-dispute), the sourced timeline behind the export squeeze that makes home-market channels matter more.
- [Liquor brand marketing in 2026](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/blog/liquor-brand-marketing), the playbook we run for beverage clients.
- [Your contact form is quietly losing you leads](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/blog/contact-form-losing-leads), because the same silent failures apply to an order confirmation.

Before the first parcel

## A store that knows which province it is talking to.

Province gating, age attestation, destination pricing and an order export shaped for each board's reporting template: that is the store we build for Alberta spirits brands. If you are switching on direct-to-consumer this year, talk to us before the first order.

[Talk to us](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/contact)