It is not a crisis, but a problem of standards which is hitting the Quebec agricultural world, Prime Minister François Legault suggested on Wednesday, closely followed by the official opposition.
Farmers have demonstrated in several regions of Quebec in recent weeks to express their fed up, caused in particular by the disastrous drop in their income. On Wednesday, three convoys of tractors gathered in Alma, in Lac-Saint-Jean.
Asked in a press scrum last week whether it was a crisis, the Minister of Agriculture, André Lamontagne, had carefully avoided describing the current situation in this way, but on Wednesday, the liberal opposition was returned to the charge.
“The Prime Minister does not want to recognize that there is an agricultural crisis,” lamented the leader of the official opposition, Marc Tanguay, during question period.
“Martin Caron [le président de l’Union des producteurs agricoles] talks about insufficient, poorly adapted programs, the economic and climatic realities of today and tomorrow, he continued. The UPA said: in the last budget, disappointment and frustration. The causes are multiple and, when we recognize that, we must recognize the crisis. Will he recognize the crisis?
Disadvantages compared to foreign competitors
To all his answers, the CAQ leader dodged by refusing to use the term crisis to describe the difficulties of agricultural producers.
“The market gardeners were very clear,” he replied. When I asked them what is the root cause of their problems, they told me: it is the standards that are not the same in Quebec as they are abroad.”
Thus, the stricter environmental standards in force in Quebec would put local producers at a disadvantage compared to their competitors abroad who can thus sell their products less expensively on our markets, he explained.
Mr. Tanguay recalled that some 500 producers demonstrated on March 8 in Rimouski, as well as 200 producers on March 15 in La Malbaie, as well as in Baie-Comeau.
Mr. Lamontagne provided nuances without daring to appropriate the term crisis himself either.
“You can call it a crisis, you can call it a storm, but we have several things, several competing elements that are manifesting at the same time, we have issues.”
Liberal MP André Fortin called for generous support from the state and programs better suited to supporting producers. He painted a dark picture of the CAQ’s record in agriculture.
“Its record is to have decimated pork production. Its record is to refuse emergency aid to horticultural producers. Its results are: more than ever, emerging farmers are forced to have a second job to pay the farm’s debts. Its results are producers who put their land as collateral because they no longer have a penny. Its results are local slaughterhouses closing, land prices skyrocketing, and out-of-control delays in finding agricultural workers.”