Evidence of meeting #7 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was products.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
President, Fédération des producteurs acéricoles du Québec
Quebec has 43 million taps. On average, there are 6,000 taps in an orchard.
Director General, Citadelle, Maple Syrup Producers' Cooperative
I can tell you that 70% of our 2,000 families are at fewer than 5,000 taps.
Conservative
Dick Harris Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Okay
We talked about the 8% tariff that would come off. I imagine that most producers are not distributors at the same time. They send it to a distributor who packages it. Or do you package it on your own farms?
President, Fédération des producteurs acéricoles du Québec
Most producers send their production for processing. I was talking earlier about traceability. Every barrel is graded before being sent to the processing plant. The syrup is then processed and exported.
Conservative
Dick Harris Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
I guess my question is this. You talked about that 8% and mentioned that you hope it reflects in the money that a grower or a maple syrup farmer could benefit from.
What do you have to do to ensure that 8% isn't taken up by the processors, distributors, so that it doesn't get passed down to the producers? How do you ensure that?
President, Fédération des producteurs acéricoles du Québec
For the past few years, the maple syrup industries in Quebec and in Canada have coexisted in harmony.
As I said earlier about the 8%, we must take advantage of the momentum and make our product known. Every time we have invested in promoting it, the production—the increase in volume—was huge. If the volume goes up, both producers and processors will benefit.
In Quebec alone, 40 million taps are waiting to be used. To answer your question, I will say that, if there is a shortage of products and the markets become a little more open, 2,000 producers are ready to provide the products.
Director General, Citadelle, Maple Syrup Producers' Cooperative
As complementary information—I'll be very quick—as a representative of the industry, our margin is 1.5%. That's public information. We cannot afford to keep those margins. The 8% will go on the market because in the food industry, especially in ours, 1.5% is the bottom line benefit that we make. This information is public on our side.
As I said, we want growth in volume, so the 8% will be in the market and not on our pocket.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bev Shipley
Thank you very much.
As you know we have a little bit of committee business to wrap up at the end. I want to thank the witnesses for coming out with great presentations and good questions. It's a bit of a unique one—we have not had maple syrup producers in front of us, so I thank you for that.
We'll break now and go into some committee business in a few minutes.
[Proceedings continue in camera]