Top court won’t hear appeal from rebel maple syrup maker

A Quebec maple syrup producer who fought against the cartel that controls the province’s maple syrup production says she is running out of options after the Supreme Court of Canada decided Thursday not to hear her appeal.

Angèle Grenier, a grandmother who burns wood to boil maple syrup from the maple trees she taps in St. Clotilde-de-Beauce, south of Quebec City, has been fighting since 2002 against the Fédération des producteurs acéricoles du Quebec, the maple syrup producers’ union.

Quebec rules say producers must sell most of their syrup to the federation, which pays them for the syrup at intervals, and shaves 14 cents off each pound of syrup to pay for its supply management infrastructure. Only small containers sold at the sugar shack or in a local grocery store are exempt. The system, unique to Quebec, means producers can wait years to get paid for their syrup. The federation also tells farmers how much syrup they may produce.

Rather than play by those rules, Grenier exported hundreds of barrels of her syrup to a buyer in New Brunswick over 12 years. The federation charged her with infractions of its rules. Grenier fought several battles at the Quebec agricultural marketing board and in the courts. She lost, and also lost at the Court of Appeal in Quebec City.

In 2014 a judge ruled that inspectors could enter Grenier’s sugar shack at any time to inspect her syrup production. In 2015, Grenier reached an arrangement that requires her to sell all her syrup through the federation. But she still owes the federation about $300,000 in fines. She has also spent more than $100,000 on lawyers.

Now the Supreme Court court will not hear her appeal.

“I am very disappointed,” Grenier said Thursday. “This means that in Quebec, people don’t have the same rights as in Canada.”

Grenier is one of hundreds of Quebec maple syrup producers who rose up in protest against the federation’s rules. The federation has said that about three quarters of its 7,300 maple syrup producers support the supply management system.

Paul Rouillard, the acting executive director of the federation, said Thursday, “we are happy with the decision of the Supreme Court. That doesn’t mean we are going to be mean to Madame Grenier.”

Rouillard said that, over the past two years, 170 maple syrup producers in Quebec have signed “gentlemen’s agreements” to settle their disputes with the federation.