The shrinking beer glass

The observation

2026-07-09

Canadians bought 1,876 million litres of beer in the year ending March 31, 2025 — down 3.8%, the ninth consecutive annual decline in beer volume; total alcohol volume fell 3.0%, a fourth straight annual decline (Statistics Canada's control-and-sale survey).

OFFICIAL Statistics Canada — Control and sale of alcoholic beverages and cannabis, fiscal year ending March 2025 (The Daily, March 2026) · OFFICIAL Statistics Canada — Control and Sale of Alcoholic Beverages — summary of changes (non-alcoholic beverages category added, September 2023)

Possible explanations

One reading: the generational shift — younger cohorts report drinking less, and the beer curve is where that shows up first.

Another: substitution rather than abstention — the missing litres may be moving into non-alcoholic beer and adjacent categories the alcohol tables do not yet publish.

Named confounder: Volume totals move with population and price as well as with habits; a per-adult series would tell its own, different story.

What would settle it

Publication of the survey's own non-alcoholic beverages category — added to the questionnaire in its September 2023 redesign, per the survey's published summary of changes, but not yet carried as a beverage type in its public sales tables — which would show where the missing litres went, if anywhere.

Sources — the Signals register (2)

Signals may cite sources below Countability's official-data floor — the only place on the site that does. Each such source is labelled with its own standing warning wherever it appears.

OFFICIALStatistics Canada

Control and sale of alcoholic beverages and cannabis, fiscal year ending March 2025 (The Daily, March 2026)

Statistics Canada Open Licence.

Open source → · accessed 2026-07-09 · archived at citation

OFFICIALStatistics Canada

Control and Sale of Alcoholic Beverages — summary of changes (non-alcoholic beverages category added, September 2023)

Statistics Canada Open Licence; survey-methodology documentation page.

Open source → · accessed 2026-07-09 · archived at citation

Signals sit outside the core Record. No published claim or finding rests on a Signal, and a Signal enters the Record only by passing the same evidence and review standards as every other claim.