NOTRE-DAME DU BIEN-CONSEIL, Que. – For dairy farmer Jean-Luc LeClair, the latest instalment in the battle over Quebec separation is merely business as usual.
Which party will govern? For the 44-year-old dairy farmer from this St. Lawrence River farming community, in the area known as “the heart of Quebec,” that is the issue in the Sept. 12 Quebec election.
The issue of whether the province becomes a country will be decided next year.
“First, we choose a government,” he said. “The issue of how they will act in Canada comes later.”
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Either way, this farmer, who voted “yes” in the 1980 referendum to leave Canada, voted Liberal in 1989 and would vote “no” if a referendum were held today, is not worried.
The prospect of separation neither scares nor excites him.
“Whatever the government, whatever the system, the dairy industry is doing well and will do well,” he said. “People have to eat and we can feed them.”
A hundred kilometres south, in the more English-speaking Eastern Townships, the prospect of separation is more frightening.
“We are talking about the potential of a half a billion dollars worth of lost sales in the dairy industry,” said dairy farmer Peter Riordon of the Cowansville area. “This is not something I would welcome.”
A few hundred kilometres west, in the predominantly English-speaking Pontiac Valley of West Quebec, the view is more strident.
“The rest of Quebec may leave Canada but not here,” said dairy farmer Chris Judd of Shawville. “This will always be part of Canada. We were here first. No one will push us out.”
Parti QuŽbecois spokesmen scoff at any suggestion that parts of Quebec could be separated from the new nation to join Canada.
In the Pontiac, founded almost 200 years ago by American, Irish and Scottish settlers, it is anything but loose talk.
Dairy producers’ votes important
The latest federalist/separatist battle for the hearts, minds and votes of Quebec farmers is being played out mainly in the province’s 12,800 dairy barns.
It is a $3 billion food industry employing 38,000 people – the largest food sector and one of the largest economic sectors in Quebec.
It is also, according to federalists, potentially the biggest farm loser if the province separates.
Quebec farmers produce 38 percent of Canada’s milk and 48 percent of the milk destined for processing.
Federalists warn there would be no guarantee other Canadian farmers would agree to maintain the national supply management system that gives Quebec dairy farmers such a large slice of the Canadian market.
Nor, they say, would there be a guarantee that an independent Quebec could join the free trade agreements which have helped the province’s large pork export industry.
“The federal system and being part of Canada has helped Quebec,” Liberal public security minister and former associate agriculture minister Robert Middlemiss said in an interview. “There is no reason to think in an independent Quebec, those advantages would be available.”
The Quebec Farmers’ Association, representing 600 English-speaking farmers, agrees.
The August issue of the QFA newspaper warns that $4 billion worth of quota value is at risk. “Vote for a Quebec in Canada.”
Separatist supporters dismiss that as fear-mongering.
“I have the impression that on learning of a sovereign Quebec, farmers, or even to go further, cows, will give less milk on account of being afraid,” Bloc QuŽbecois MP Jean Landry has said sarcastically.
The Union des Producteurs Agricoles, representing all the province’s farmers, says it is not taking sides but it also rejects the fears.
“There is a link between Canadian and Quebec farmers and if the political situation changes, that commercial link will still be there,” said UPA president Laurent Pellerin, a hog producer.
“I don’t say it would be better or worse, just different. If you have a good product and market it well, it will sell.”
PQ strategists are hoping that practical attitude will help them win the majority of rural ridings that voted for the separatist BQ in the 1993 federal election.
As added insurance, the PQ promises a return to the priority on agricultural support programs that characterized the first PQ government in 1976 to 1985.
Food self-sufficiency was the goal then, fostered by stabilization, credit and support policies.
Good news for farmers?
An independent Quebec would favor its farmers because they will feed the new nation, they say. The millions now sent to Ottawa in farm taxes will be kept in Quebec to support farmers.
The PQ is promising an interventionist, big-spending government that will free farmers from the so-called shackles of federalism.
“Sovereignty will make it possible to put an end to duplication and overlap in agricultural and regional development policies, and re-orient these policies on the basis of our own priorities,” says the PQ blue-print document Quebec in a New World.
QFA president Doug MacKinnon does not find that appealing. “We don’t think they are living in reality at all.”
For non-committal Jean-Luc LeClair, it is nothing to fear.
“Whatever choice I make, nothing will happen tomorrow,” he said. “In fact, I can’t imagine that either choice will produce a much different result.”
