The Fédération des agricultrices du Québec has a number of programs to help women start or grow their businesses and even to facilitate business transfers.
We are starting to travel around Canada, since we get invited to events to talk to women farmers about our Dimension E program, which we would like to expand across Canada. The program is very good for networking. It helps women by providing lists of names of agricultural tax experts and even real estate agents specializing in agriculture. Those are hard to find in Quebec, and I imagine the same is true in the other provinces. Agriculture is really a world of its own, and the regulations are often different from those that apply to regular trade.
This is a program that we developed in Quebec to help women farmers. Over the past 20 years, the percentage of farms with women owners or co-owners has increased from about 4% to 27%. Quebec is making good progress. If it can be done, our federation would be pleased to expand its program into the other provinces to help other women farmers make the same progress.