Quebec agriculture minister and deputy premier Francois Gendron, a key player in the first Quebec sovereignist government in a decade, has a vision of Quebec food sovereignty for the province. He would call it a nation.
And as he outlined the principles of food sovereignty to Canadian Federation of Agriculture directors at their late July summer board meeting, it was a vision of a province setting its own rules, like a sovereign country.
Local food would be a priority. Provincial production would be encouraged and supported. The province’s emphasis on farm products marketing boards would be defended.
Read Also
Sask. ag group wants strychnine back
The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan has written to the federal government asking for emergency use of strychnine to control gophers
“It means the ability of the state of Quebec to define its own food policy without affecting other provinces,” he told the CFA board. “But we’re not going to exclude imports and we’re not going to build a fence around Quebec.”
But it also seems to be a play on words.
Food sovereignty typically means providing as much local food as possible. As Gendron described it, the concept means promoting the food and food processing industry in the province, making sure consumers understand the importance of agriculture in their economy and diet and the benefits of home-grown over imported.
Parti Québécois premier Pauline Marois announced the ‘food sovereignty’ strategy in May and her choice of an agriculture minister as deputy premier in a minority government was symbolically important as a reach-out to rural conservative voters who often see the PQ as an urban-oriented left-wing movement.
In an interview after his speech to the CFA, Gendron said the PQ food sovereignty agenda simply is a way to highlight, support and promote Quebec’s multi-billion dollar food sector.
The Union des Producteurs Agricoles, Quebec’s powerful farm lobby with a government mandate to speak for all producers, supports the provincial-national agricultural dream.
Listening to the agriculture minister speak of Quebec’s farm sector vision had the mind wandering back to a 1977 speech by a new PQ agriculture minister just up the street from where Gendron was speaking.
Then-minister Jean Garon, in the newly minted separatist government of René Levesque, told a Montreal meeting of the Canada Grains Council that on the way to food self-sufficiency for an independent Quebec, the government would spend $120 million over five years (not small coin in those days) to develop Quebec’s farm sector.
What followed was significant provincial investment to improve its food self-sufficiency from 34 percent to 50 percent in five years.
By 1982, the province was Canada’s largest hog producer and 75 percent self-sufficient in feed grains.
The ‘Quebec model’ of state-supported agriculture that had been in place for two decades was enhanced. Although somewhat slimmed down by budget restraints, the model continues to exist and Quebec remains the most farm-friendly government in Canada.
Gendron, the dean of the Quebec National Assembly as a continuous MNA since 1976, was a rookie in the government that had Garon as minister, and watched the strategy unfold.
“Mr. Garon did good work on the food self-sufficiency file and that was needed to boost Quebec production,” he said. “Quebec needed that policy at the time but now it is time for a new vision, food sovereignty.”
