Forty people attended a discussion on agriculture, food security and rural economic development at the Little Red Wagon Winery in Shawville on Friday morning that was hosted by Pontiac MP Sophie Chatel with special guest federal revenue minister Marie-Claude Bibeau.
Chatel said they were there mostly to listen.
“We want to hear your point of view, what we should be doing,” said the MP. “Everything we cannot answer today, we will provide an answer later.”
A key issue raised was the need for direct support to farmers.
“More and more farmers are getting out of farming. More struggle to make ends meet. Lots of farmers are approaching retirement age with no money in their pocket. Young people are starting off and can’t see how they’ll ever make a living out of farming,” Geneviève Grossenbacher told THE EQUITY after the meeting.
Based in MRC Papineau, Grossenbacher is the Director of Policy with an organization called Farmers for Climate Solutions, working with governments to support farmers in adapting to climate change, and is also president of Écoute Agricole which offers mental health support to farmers.
“There’s kind of a crisis now with inflation, interest rates, climate change . . . there’s kind of a perfect storm that’s hitting farmers and we really need a crisis response.”
“We’re seeing mental health issues are increasing amongst the farming community. The level of calls we’re . . .
getting on a weekly basis for health is outrageous,” she said.
“There’s tons of money that has been invested by the government, an unprecedented $1.5 billion since 2021, which is great, but unfortunately it’s really not enough. I think we need to explore as a country what more can be done directly to support farmers because, right now, farmers are not supported enough.”
Stéphane Alary, head of the UPA for the Outaouais-Laurentides region and a fourth-generation farmer with a dairy and cash crop operation in Luskville, also talked about the lack of government investment in agriculture.
“The investment in agriculture is nothing, it is less than one per cent of the federal budget, and less than one per cent of the provincial budget,” Alary told THE EQUITY.
“As Sophie [Chatel] told us, they’ve got to put in more money, because our neighbours, some of these countries are investing three or four times as much as us, because they want to keep their agriculture, and they are more protectionist than us, that’s for sure,” Alary said.
“With the competition against us, we cannot compete. We have to pay our workers more on the farm because there’s rules in Quebec, and in the States there’s not much, it’s crazy. Convince the consumer to buy locally, that’s for sure. If you want to open the door to other products, and if people are bringing cheap food here, then subsidize the farmers.”
“Right now, it doesn’t go well, because of the conjuncture of the market, the price of things, the interest costs, all of that. Now farmers are telling their kids, ‘Well, maybe you better do something else. Or if you keep the farm, do it as a hobby . . . it’s crazy,’” Alary said.
“The solution is to put in more money . . . it’s a question of what you want to keep. We’ve got to maintain the farmers, the people who produce the food, it’s the base.”
James Thompson, who runs Our Little Farm in the community of Lochabar Partie Ouest where he grows organic vegetables, also talked about what he sees as an unfair trade regime.
“As local vegetable producers, and a lot of other producers are in the same situation, imported products don’t necessarily follow the same environmental or labour standards that we have to respect, and so that means our market is flooded with much cheaper products that we can’t compete with. The government, in its free trade agreements with other countries, they need to be prepared to put tariffs on these products,” Thompson told THE EQUITY.
“Canada is known to have excellent products that are safe, that follow the rules, yet we let other products come in that have almost no oversight. We follow the rules and we get a global market because we are rule-followers, but other people can get access to our market who are not rule-followers.”
Asked what she took from the conversation, Minister Bibeau said, “Well, support to farmers, obviously, in different ways. And food security, and the dimension of food security and food sovereignty is always a big issue in Quebec. It is important to hear that and it will feed our reflection. We’re still working on the sustainable agricultural strategy as well, it’s about to be launched, and I think we’re going in the right direction.”
“It’s always important to have these direct conversations and to feel . . . you know it’s more than listening . . . you feel the emotion and it gives us the energy and the conviction to bring it back to Ottawa, and to work on new programming and to focus in the best way possible,” the minister said.
Minister Bibeau is a former agriculture minister and represents a federal riding in the Eastern Townships. Pontiac MP Sophie Chatel chairs the Liberal party’s rural caucus.
Pontiac warden Jane Toller and mayors Bill McCleary of Shawville and Ed Walsh of Clarendon were also present for the morning’s discussion.
