Syrup producers hold rally
Quebec farmers oppose report, call for protection of existing system
Hundreds of maple syrup producers braved snow and freezing rain in Quebec City on Tuesday to march on the National Assembly in protest against a new government report that they say, if implemented, “will ruin” their iconic industry.
The federation of Quebec maple syrup producers and its parent organization, the Union des producteurs agricole (Quebec’s farmers’ union) paid for 25 buses “from the four corners of Quebec” to bring the producers to Quebec, said Caroline Cyr, a federation spokeswoman. The farmers first gathered for a rally in the city’s conference centre and then marched on the provincial parliament.
The farmers’ anger erupted five days after Quebec released a report that criticized the iron grip that the federation holds on the province’s syrup producers. In the report, which cites a Financial Post story, “Maple Syrup Rebellion,” Florent Gagné, a longtime Quebec City consultant, wrote that “the system encourages deviants, whose deviance the federation then forcefully punishes.”
As it stands, the federation has strict production targets for its members. Gagné warned that this control has pushed producers out of Quebec and into the northeastern United States, New Brunswick and Ontario, where they may make the syrup they want and sell it to whomever they choose.
He cited a 2014 report, financed by the federation, which found that “Quebec’s (syrup) market share has dropped by 1.2 per cent per year in the last decade, mainly to the benefit of the United States.”
In a news release Tuesday, however, the federation repudiated its 2014 report. Syrup market share decline? “Nothing could be further from the truth! Quebec has held 75 per cent of the global maple syrup market over the years on average, with some ups and downs.”
Simon Trepanier, general manager of the syrup producers’ federation, explained his group’s apparent repudiation of its own study by saying that Quebec producers have pleaded with the government for permission to put 2.5 million more taps in maple trees.
“In one year we can increase our market share by five per cent,” Trepanier said by phone from Quebec City. “But the government won’t give us quota. We have an expression: When you want to kill your dog, you say he has rabies.”
Trepanier blasted the Gagné report as biased. He also complained that Gagné did no economic analysis of how his proposed changes would impact production levels.
Marcel Groleau, head of Quebec’s farmers’ union said in a statement that removing quotas “will quickly reduce the value of assets currently estimated at $2 billion.”
Trepanier added that, “Quebec’s maple syrup industry is the locomotive of the maple syrup industry in North America. If we are not running well, it will derail the whole industry.”
In his report, Gagné also criticized the tribunal that prosecutes syrup producers.
“It is recommended that the government make sure, when people are nominated to the Régie des marchés agricoles et alimentaires du Québec, that these be competent and independent people,” Gagné wrote.
Daniel Gaudreau and Nathalie Bombardier, syrup producers in Scotstown, Que., who are expecting their third child, face up to $400,000 in fines and a charge of contempt of court because the federation alleges they disobeyed its rules.
Asked about Tuesday’s rally in Quebec City, Gaudreau said, “That’s their way. When they don’t like something they put tractors, hay bales or cows in the road. It’s a mafia, a cartel that controls agriculture.”