Brenda O’Farrell
The Advocate
The Union des producteurs agricoles appealed directly to Quebec Agriculture Minister André Lamontagne earlier this month, pleading for action in a number of areas to help reduce the ever-increasing bureaucratic burden being imposed on farmers.
In a four-page letter, UPA president Martin Caron asked the minister directly to act in order to fulfill a promise made by CAQ leader François Legault way back in the fall of 2018, when he was campaigning in the leadup to the election that would see him become premier.
“The big priority is the economy,” Legault told members of the UPA during a campaign stop back in September 2018. “And I think that one of the objectives we must give ourselves is to make the lives of our entrepreneurs easier.
“It’s far too complicated, there is too much bureaucracy and the deadlines are too long,” Legault acknowledged when he was seeking election.
Now, Caron is reminding Lamontagne of that pledge his party leader made to make things easier for farmers. It’s a promise that in many respects has not been fulfilled, he said.
When it comes to the administrative burden on farmers imposed by new regulations put forward by the CAQ, Caron was blunt: “The first step would certainly be to stop adding more.”
The worse problem area in this regard are regulations imposed on farmers by Quebec’s Environment Ministry, where Caron said, “the sustained support of producers is being tested regularly by the imposition of new restrictions.”
The creation of new “eco-fees” that were introduced last fall and enforced contributions to the Fonds d’électrification et de changements climatiques has created more than $400 million in extra charges producers have to pay.
The “almost systematic” requirement for farmers to engage a variety of professionals to validate documents and reports requested by government departments also adds “significant costs” for farmers, while at the same time serves as a “real source of frustration,” Caron said.
It also reduces a producer’s ability to run his or her business independently, he added.
Adding to the laundry list of complaints, Caron pointed to Quebec’s modernization of its Environmental Quality Act, legislation he described as “incredibly complex.”
“The procedures are tedious and costly, which discourages the completion of projects that require authorization,” as well as pages of paperwork that “can represent dozens of hours of work, hundreds of pages to complete and thousands of dollars in various fees.”
Caron also underlined the struggles producers wrestle with if they opt to hire foreign temporary works. The UPA president asked Lamontagne for action on these issues “because it is essential to give agricultural producers all possible means so that they can devote more time to carry out their mission.”