QUEBEC CITY – It is an article of faith for Quebec nationalists, both federalist and separatist, that the province has not received a fair shake from the federal government.
While western farmers have been coddled, Quebecers have had to look to their provincial government for support, according to this conventional wisdom.
For federalists like West Quebec Liberal MNA and provincial public security minister Robert Middlemiss, it is an injustice that is being corrected.
“It is true there has been some inequity in the past but I believe the situation is being rectified,” he said in an interview.
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For the separatists, it is part of the proof that federalism is broken and cannot be fixed.
They like to use the late 1980s as the benchmark. Those were years of large subsidies for Prairie farmers caught in drought, trade wars and Conservative fence-mending.
Bloc QuŽbecois agriculture representative Jean-Paul Marchand has argued that in 1987, Quebec taxpayers sent more than $1 billion to Prairie farmers, twice as much as the Quebec government spent on its own farmers.
“Twenty-five percent of Canadians who live in Quebec pay into a system that gives back only 10 percent,” he told the House of Commons. “This is not very profitable for farmers in Quebec.”
An exasperated federal official denounces this as “percentile federalism.”
“Quebec gains in some areas and doesn’t get back full value in others, but you can’t insist on 25 percent return in each sector,” he said.
Yet it is one of the separatist arguments that federalists in the province must answer in the debate over the benefits or penalties of Confederation.
Andre Charland, director of agriculture development for Quebec within Agriculture Canada, offered both numbers and policy arguments to explain the federal presence.
With just under $4 billion in farm cash receipts last year, Quebec represented over 15 percent of national farm cash receipts.
“It is a good rule of thumb that in most areas, Quebec is 15 percent of national agriculture,” Charland said.
Yet for 1994-95, Ottawa expects to spend $329 million in Quebec agriculture, just 10.9 percent of the expected $3.2 billion national expenditure, according to figures published in August by the federal government.
“The numbers don’t add up and some people make a point of it,” conceded Charland.
The difference, he said, is in the type of agriculture and the nature of provincial support in the various provinces.
Agricultural focus varies
While Prairie agriculture tends to be weighted toward commodities that trade on world markets at world prices, the largest Quebec sector is supply-managed dairy with cost-of-production pricing and healthy incomes.
“That is a federal program which has a value to producers here that does not show up in spending statistics,” said Charland.
As well, Quebec has developed support programs for its farmers that see twice as many provincial dollars as federal dollars go into the sector.
In other provinces, particularly the Prairies, it is reversed.
According to Agriculture Canada figures sent to all Quebec MPs this year, the $120 million dairy subsidy that flows into the province is the largest single federal contribution.
Food inspection and four federal research stations send another $51 million in wages into the province.
More than 1,500 of Agriculture Canada’s 11,000 employees work in Quebec.
