I'd like to welcome you more particularly because you're from my region. I live in the neighbouring municipality of Cap-Saint-Ignace. The town of Montmagny is my major centre. I'm a maple syrup producer. In our region, maple syrup production occupies a very important place. In my region of Montmagny—L'islet, which represents 50% of Mr. Crête's riding, we produce more maple syrup than Ontario and New Brunswick combined. So you see the importance of maple syrup production for the region.
As a maple syrup producer and representing producers—I'm President of the Quebec Federation of Maple Syrup Producers—I must tell you that I'm very pleased to be able to address the representatives of all the political parties today. This is the first time I've had the opportunity to speak to all these people at the same time. Very often, we meet one on one with the people from the parties and we tell them a bit of our story. But this is the first time I'll be able to tell it to everybody at the same time, and I'm very pleased about that. Thank you for your attention.
The Quebec Federation of Maple Syrup Producers represents 7,300 Quebec maple syrup producers. We produce 90% of Canadian maple syrup. The turnover of Quebec's maple syrup producers is approximately $175 million. You often hear that maple syrup is a recreational type of production. We like to talk about it and eat it, but we're never inclined to think about it as a type of agricultural production involving risk, like all other types of agricultural production. I can tell you that maple syrup producers have now reached an industrial level and that their businesses are comparable with those in other sectors of production. Producers would like Canadian agricultural policies to recognize that there are risks, relating to income, climate conditions, disasters caused by winds or bad weather. We as producers would like those tools to be accessible to us as well.
I'm going to tell you about more specific issues. We can earn income in two ways in the farming sectors. We can earn it in the market, with provincial regulations that may be accessible as a result of existing federal regulations. In the maple syrup sector, we earn our income in the market under the Quebec Act respecting the marketing of agricultural, food and fish products. That act stems from acts and regulations at the federal level allowing offices to regulate at the provincial level. As it concerns us, it's very important that it be preserved. It should even be reinforced.
In a globalization context, producers are left to their own devices, and there has been a concentration of capital. Yes, there is a concentration of producers, but the capital concentration is much greater than the producer concentration. Even if we think we are better armed and better equipped to sell our product, I can tell you that, when we're left to our own devices, without regulations enabling us to structure and giving us collective tools, we're in even greater difficulty than before globalization. I ask you not to weaken the regulations, but rather to reinforce them in order to give producers the means to organize and regroup so that they can seek the best possible prices in the market.
I'm not necessarily asking you for money. I'm asking you for tools, resources to enable us to make money. I find it inconceivable that maple syrup producers should be forced to resort to programs like stabilization insurance and so on. Our product is unique. If we want to be able to put it on the market, we have to have tools in order to organize.
I would also like to talk to you about the product's safety and wholesomeness. In the maple syrup sector in Quebec, we as producers have established our own tools to control our product. All our maple syrup is classified and inspected before being sold to processors. We observe that some processors import maple syrup from the United States, from Maine and Vermont among others. No quality control is conducted on these products. We find it deplorable that that maple syrup can enter Canada without undergoing the quality controls that we have set for ourselves. When the time comes to export it, we'd like federal regulations to see to product traceability and impose certain requirements for that purpose on all people who export.
The regulations currently leave that open. People can request inspection certificates from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, but they do it on a voluntary basis. If they don't request it, they can export the product like that, without having subjected it to CFIA's quality controls. In the licences, businesses are asked to be responsible. Given that one or two visits are conducted a year—sometimes none—we feel there is too much flexibility in the exporting of maple syrup. We'd like there to be stricter control of businesses that export maple syrup. All the acts and regulations that we have passed must be implemented, and all producers must support them. There shouldn't be just one small group supporting the system to the detriment of all others.
Now I'd like to talk about renewal. In the context of the Agricultural Policy Framework, we've been a bit spoiled. We have benefited from certain Agriculture Canada research programs. We'd like that to continue in the future.
With respect to research, we ask that new money be allocated to it. A little more should even be allocated. On the other hand, we wouldn't want that money to be taken from the income security mechanisms. It has to be a new monetary contribution. In our opinion, the future depends on research and innovation. We don't want that to be done to the detriment of other sectors such as income security.
The same is true for market development. The Federation of Maple Syrup Producers is very satisfied with the latest Agricultural Policy Framework. Agriculture Canada recognized that we were the organization administering the SPCA program. We can go after the money available at Agriculture Canada in order to conduct generic promotion of maple products outside Canada. That's been very beneficial for us in recent years. We'd like that to continue.
I'm going to talk a little more specifically about the income security programs. Agricultural producers are of the view that there must be a lot of flexibility in income security program administration. In the maple syrup industry, we've introduced an inventory management mechanism. In Quebec, we manage a maple syrup bank in order to offset weather conditions. That bank contained as much as 60 million pounds two years ago. Today it contains 37 million. Next spring, at the start of the harvest, it will probably contain 20 to 22 million.
In the future, however, we would like to have an additional partner to support that reserve. The only ones currently supporting this strategic reserve are the producers and Financière agricole, in other words the Government of Quebec. When you manage a strategic maple syrup reserve, that's the equivalent of income security mechanisms for the producers of Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. They can produce maple syrup. They live in regions where they often produce before we do. I'm thinking of Nova Scotia and Ontario in particular. So they can sell all their production before we do. New Brunswick's production is similar to that of Quebec in terms of the sap flow. However, it's not necessarily a province with a high export volume. Since the producers haven't organized a marketing board, they sell their maple syrup to processors, who buy it before buying syrup from Quebec. Quebec's maple syrup bank is the organization that manages the income security mechanism for all Canadian producers. Consequently, the CAIS program will virtually stop intervening in the maple syrup sector.
If managing a good maple syrup bank with stable prices produces good results for all Canadian producers, why wouldn't the federal government invest with us to support this reserve so that Quebec producers always have an interest in managing the inventory in the most economic way possible so that there is stability in the maple syrup sector?
What we'll need to supplement our income mechanism is a process to manage weather conditions. Ultimately, it would suffice to develop a form of harvest insurance that would be accessible in order to offset weather conditions, versus small or large harvests, in terms of production.
The other element we need in the maple syrup sector is a disaster program. When wind storms occur and trees are uprooted, sometimes all our equipment is in place. If we no longer have any woodland in order to produce, that's a net loss. Producers no longer have any income for a number of years because it takes at least 40 years for our trees to be able to produce. So we have to wait 40 years before we have another tree that can produce the same yield. So maple syrup producers absolutely need a disaster program. Moreover, as a result of the high winds that occurred this summer, some Quebec producers lost a large part of their maple stands and are still waiting for programs. They haven't received any assistance.
Early in the winter, in the first days of December, there was an ice storm between Ontario and Quebec. Producers suffered quite significant damage to their sugarbush, even more significant, I would say than in the big ice storm in 1998. They're still waiting for programs; they haven't received any assistance. We think these are unacceptable situations. In the maple syrup industry, we can no longer live this way, in view of the investments we have made.
For example, for a sugarbush of 10,000 taps, it takes an investment of about $500,000 to $600,000 to purchase the woodlot and equipment, in order to be in production. We've reached levels comparable to those of all other types of production.
I've done a brief overview of everything I had to ask you as the federation's representative. As I said earlier, I hope that talking to the members of the three parties at the same time, to all our representatives in Canada, we'll expedite the maple syrup industry file, mainly as regards border controls and the need for income security programs such as those that have been put in place, in order to meet the needs of Canada's maple syrup producers.
Thank you.