More news on the bigness of beer coming out of the edifice that is StatsCan:

According to the Statscan report released Wednesday, national wines sales reached $4.2-billion compared with $4-billion sold in spirits in 2004/2005. Beer still outsells both in the Canada, accounting for $8.4-billion in sales last year. But wine sales increased at much higher rate (6.5 per cent) in 2005 than either beer (3.3 per cent) or spirits (2.3 per cent).

$8.4 billion in 2005 is up from $7.8 billion in 2003 - which is the figure that I used back here to consider what the things are out there that beer is actually bigger than. Along that line, it is interesting to note that the sale of beer in Ontario at $3.2 billion is roughly 125% the operating budget for the Nova Scotia's entire Department of Health of $2.56 billion.