Brenda O’Farrell
The Advocate

The Union des producteurs agricoles welcomed the news earlier this month that the Quebec National Assembly voted to approve Bill 28, which allows the farmers’ union to change its fees charged to agricultural producers.

“Premier François Legault and his government honoured their electoral promise by adopting legislative changes to adjust our funding formula to reflect today’s reality in the agricultural sector,” said UPA president Martin Caron.

The bill, which passed the last legislative hurdle Nov. 9, will now allow the UPA to review its financing structure and begin consultations with producers with the aim of adopting a new fee structure. This new structure would then have to be submitted to the Régie des Marchés Agricole et Alimentaires du Québec for approval. The Régie is an administrative tribunal tasked with overseeing the marketing of agricultural and forestry products.

What this will mean for individual producers is not yet clear. The UPA would only say the law will give it more flexibility, allowing it to fix mandatory fees charged to producers based on the legal status of the farming business, taking into account the number of owners and the size of the company.

“It will now be possible for us to count on a fairer formula, as producers have been demanding for several years,” Caron said in a statement.

Bill 28 will affect all 42,000 agricultural producers represented by the UPA.