To deal with the aging of the population and the economic devitalization of our rural regions, there may be solutions. Among these: “The rural territory should no longer be the preserve of agricultural production,” says Stéphane Gendron.
In the form of an essay on the occupation of the territory and rurality, Rapailler our territories is a real cry from the heart in favor of human dignity and rurality, “this immense glacier which recedes as the city gains ground”.
A first book — which won’t be the last, another one is already in preparation — that Stéphane Gendron invites us to read like the long narration of the documentary film he would have liked to make on the occupation of our territory. A plea for social diversity and cohabitation in our countryside, the only means according to him to ensure the survival of our rurality.
To feed his reflection, the man says he relied on his personal experience. “For four or five years, since I left crazy public life, I have been living in time. We are in another dimension, ”he says in an interview. To the rhythm of the elements and the passage of the seasons, that of the birds and the vegetation. “I ‘reconnected’ with rurality in this way. And with the climate crisis, I have noticed that our rural way of life is also shaken up, disrupted. »
Born in 1967 in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, the son of a lumberjack from Saint-Octave-de-l’Avenir in the Gaspé — a village closed by the Quebec government in 1971 — and a mother rank school, Stéphane Gendron grew up in Saint-Rémi, in Montérégie.
Trained in law and history, he also studied at the École supérieure de musique Vincent-d’Indy as well as at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, before being political attaché to Jean Garon when he was minister of Education. From 2003 to 2013, Stéphane Gendron spent ten years at the head of the town hall of Huntingdon, a “city of centrality in a rural region” located in the west of Montérégie.
Then host and columnist in the media, accustomed to controversies, the man says he put the pedal soft and took the key to the fields a few years ago, operating a small farm.
An experience that led him to want to deconstruct a number of myths. The return of small farms, the local market, the short circuit, organic agriculture: a completely laudable movement, launched in the United States a few years ago before arriving in Quebec, accelerated with the pandemic, believes Stéphane Gendron. “But it’s a kind of postcard, which comes up against the reality on the ground. It’s not true that you’re going to make $150,000 on one hectare under intensive cultivation. But it’s big fashion, everyone gets into it. It’s part of the myths of the new rurality. “To think that we will be able to feed people with organic is a decoy, he believes. “Unfortunately, we did not support all these producers with income security. The small nearby farm is not supported. »
We need to “break the mould”, believes Stéphane Gendron, who denounces a “right of veto” granted to agriculture and its industry on the development of the regions since 1977 in Quebec. “We must also allow the food farm to benefit from the same tax incentives as those granted to conventional agriculture. »
And to avoid the autonomy deficit of the regions, he also suggests reforming municipal taxation in the regions. In this regard, it seems urgent to him to review the method of financing municipalities, mainly based on property tax (the municipal tax), a “system which has the effect of institutionalizing poverty in our regions”, denounces -he.
“Basically, continues Stéphane Gendron, it’s a book to renew a dialogue between two worlds that have lost each other. We have the impression that we have a big country, but Quebec, basically, is a bit like a big American city and its suburbs. There are two or three urban centers and the further away you go, the greater the divide. You fall into a ditch. Our economic vitality indices are becoming more and more negative and we have fewer and fewer services. »
A division, he underlines, which is not specific to Quebec or Canada, while in France, the rise of the far right and the movement of yellow vests are symptoms of a significant social divide. .
Similarly, he writes that the “sad spectacle unfolding before our eyes in the United States is only a prelude to what we will experience in Quebec and Canada shortly”, predicting a rise in extremism and intolerance in Quebec society. “The Maxime Bernier and Éric Duhaime of this world are not accidents on the way, but the harbingers of a troubling future,” he believes.
To ensure our development today and tomorrow, we must, he thinks, bet on the environment, social diversity, the revival of the peasantry and new technologies. And he believes that the solution must also go through the repopulation of our regions.
On a more personal note, the man also pleads in his book in favor of “degrowth”. An unavoidable issue, which no one, according to him, really wants to hear about. “I would dream of running an election campaign promising people a downsizing plan. We have to start it, the decline, if we want to get there one day. We should say flat business. It’s all well and good, electric cars, but the real question is: “do you really need a tank?”. »
“Modernity, he writes, places us before an alternative: to die in resistance to change or to plunge into a world still full of unknowns and to be reborn. We have nothing more to lose. »
He regrets that we miss a person like Hauris Lalancette, this outspoken farmer from Pierre Perrault’s Abitibi films. “This exceptional man had the soul of rurality. He simply embodied it, in all its dizzying grandeur. »