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Fighting to keep their syrup out of the hands of the powerful Quebec monopoly, producers sneak barrels by night, deal in a black market and even flee the province

Maple syrup
rebellion

‘Worse than drugs’

STE-CLOTILDE-DE-BEAUCE, QC. • On an April morning, Angèle Grenier tramps on snowshoes through her sugar maple forest. Her vest pockets bulge with plastic spouts, tube connectors, clamps, wire ties, a tool for twisting the ties, surveyor’s tape, tube-cutters, and a snack: a molasses cookie in a Ziploc bag.

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At each maple Grenier stops and taps a spout with her mallet, securing it in a hole. Maple sap flows from these spouts through pipes, down the hill to a reservoir in her sugar shack. The tap of her mallet and a crow’s call are all that disturb the stillness of the sugar bush.

This diminutive, twinkle-eyed grandmother hardly looks the part of a guerilla. Yet in recent years Grenier and other maple syrup producers in Quebec have sent the Fédération des producteurs acéricoles du Québec — the provincial syrup producers’ union — into paroxysms of rage. There is a maple syrup insurgency afoot, and the union is doing everything it can to thwart the subversive activity of Grenier and her fellow insurrectionist syrup producers.

Backed by the Quebec justice system and the provincial police, sheriffs have raided sugar shacks down country roads and seized barrels of maple syrup, using trucks and front-end loaders. The federation’s goal: enforcing a supply management system that controls the sale and proceeds of maple syrup in Quebec.

Angèle Grenier taps maple trees in the

Angèle Grenier uses snow shoes as she taps maple trees in the “sugar bush” woods on her property in Sainte-Clotilde, QC. (Laura Pedersen/National Post)

“They have more power than police,” says Daniel Gaudreau, a syrup producer in Scotstown, Que. “They can come into my house anytime they want.”

Quebec is the Saudi Arabia of maple syrup. This food fight has shattered the bucolic image of sugaring-off season here. Producers whisk away their sweet liquid by night, trade in “black market syrup” and rage against what they call the “mafia” of the producers’ union.

In a bizarre twist that made headlines across Quebec, the federation this month stationed security guards in several sugar shacks, to stand over the farmers and watch that they don’t sell a drop of maple syrup outside the iron confines of its cartel.

When one producer gave a visiting reporter a small tub of maple butter as a souvenir, it came with a warning: hide it in his pocket, to avoid the prying eyes of a guard stationed just outside the sugar shack.

They have more power than police. They can come into my house anytime they want

“It’s worse than drugs,” says Grenier. “There’s not a single pusher who would get pursued like this or pay fines like us.”

Like those Western growers who not long ago rebelled against the similarly monopolistic Canadian Wheat Board before Ottawa liberated them, these producers say they simply want the right to trade in their harvest freely. To sell to whomever they choose. To fetch the highest price they can, and to collect payment upon delivery. The federation does not allow this.

Mathieu Audy of the Fédération des producteurs acèricoles du Québec, (middle) inspects barrels of maple syrup in the sugar shack belonging to Angèle Grenier (left) at her property in Sainte-Clotilde, QC.

Mathieu Audy of the Fédération des producteurs acèricoles du Québec, (middle) inspects barrels of maple syrup in the sugar shack belonging to Angèle Grenier (left) at her property in Sainte-Clotilde, QC. (Laura Pedersen/National Post)

In defiance of the rules, Grenier exported hundreds of barrels of maple syrup to New Brunswick from 2002 through 2014 — just so she could collect the money she earned. Last year she knew she was being watched. Her brother and her neighbour each brought a tractor. In under an hour, with three tractors, the team loaded 40 barrels of syrup on a truck. “All the children came and we did it quick, quick,” she says. The truck sped off down her dirt road.The federation has now shut down Grenier’s exports. Last month Justice Clément Sampson of Superior Court in Ste-Joseph-de-Beauce wrote an order permitting “a sheriff to penetrate into the sugar shack of [Grenier], without notice, at any time judged reasonable and as frequently as they judge appropriate … to verify the inventory of maple syrup, take photos and videos of the locale and the inventory, and put a mark, a seal, a tag or any other necessary identifying label on every maple syrup container.” Grenier is currently appealing the judgment.

Having tapped her maple spouts, Grenier returns to her sugar shack. Unannounced, Mathieu Audy, an inspector from the federation, pulls up. He takes notes and snaps photos. Then the questioning begins.

“Did you change your press?” Audy asks Grenier. “How much maple syrup have you made? What size are those barrels? Thirty-two gallons? Thirty-four? Did the sap run on Good Friday? Is it just running from gravity? Do you have a production registry?”

The provincial syrup cartel imposes quotas on producers, stockpiles the surplus, and fixes the price of syrup. Getting a more reliable, less volatile price was exactly what producers wanted when delegates voted to create a marketing board in 2001.

But they didn’t anticipate how that decision would threaten their dominance in the maple syrup market. Just as OPEC’s cartel drove up the price of oil in recent years, making it increasingly profitable  for North American competitors to tap shale deposits in North Dakota or exploit Alberta’s oilsands, the stable price of maple syrup has inspired a kind of sweet gold rush across eastern North America —threatening Quebec’s supremacy in the sugar bush.

SyrupSales

“We stabilized the market in North America, which means new players are interested in coming in,” says Paul Rouillard, deputy director of the federation. New Brunswick and Ontario make nearly double the syrup they did a decade ago; Vermont, Maine and New York have more than doubled production. Quebec’s own maple syrup farmers are moving to freer markets.

A federation report last fall found that Quebec tapped 26 per cent more maple trees between 2002 and 2012. But it’s still slipping. Quebec, which 10 years ago sold 78 per cent of the world’s syrup, now sells just 69 per cent. The report warns of “important growth in U.S. maple syrup production.”

“Don’t be too hard on us,” says Rouillard. “We know that economically it’s not the best thing, but we want to protect our producers. It’s our distinct society. A lot of anglophones don’t understand us.”


Emilie Lacasse, a security guard assigned to maple syrup producer Steve Côté's sugar shack, examines tubs of sap at Côté's sugar shack in Sawyerville, QC.
Emilie Lacasse, a security guard assigned to maple syrup producer Steve Côté’s sugar shack, examines tubs of sap at Côté’s sugar shack in Sawyerville, QC. (Laura Pedersen/National Post)

Raids, seizures, bank records

Steve Côté and Caroline Morin, who have four daughters, own a sugar bush with 25,000 taps in Saint-Mathias-de-Bonneterre, on a dirt road high in the Appalachian Mountains five kilometres from the New Hampshire border. On a recent day the sugar shack bustles with activity. Morin, wearing a lab coat, opens a spigot to pour molten syrup out of a roaring oil-fired boiler. She’s taken a month off from her job at a daycare in Sherbrooke to help with sugaring off.

Maple syrup producer Steve Côté loads barrels of maple syrup into a storage area in his sugar shack in Sawyerville, Quebec.

Maple syrup producer Steve Côté loads barrels of maple syrup into a storage area in his sugar shack in Sawyerville, Quebec (Laura Pedersen/National Post)

In April 2013 the couple got unwelcome visitors: sheriffs, a truck, a loader and two police cruisers.

“They took my syrup,” recalls Côté, 49. “They took 100 barrels and about 1,500 cans to their warehouse in Laurierville. I want my syrup back. My feeling is that the syrup belongs to me.” Investigators also searched his bank accounts and questioned staff at the local IGA, to whom he sold syrup.

Last year sheriffs returned, but found only one barrel of syrup to seize. Côté had loaded his production on trucks at night, and sold it in the United States.

The federation is now clamping down directly on what a Quebec judge calls “rebel” producers including Côté, Natalie Bombardier and Daniel Gaudreau in Scotstown, Roger Roy in Saint-Augustin-de-Woburn near Lac-Mégantic and Robert Hodge in Bury, Que. The federation has posted guards from Garda Security to each of these sugar shacks: three shifts of eight hours each — 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Most galling to the so-called rebels, the federation plans to send the bill — roughly $1,000 a day for each guard — to the maple syrup producers themselves.

Emilie Lacasse, a security guard assigned to the sugar shack of maple syrup producer Steve Côté, places seals on top of barrels of maple syrup produced at Côté's sugar shack.
Emilie Lacasse, a security guard assigned to the sugar shack of maple syrup producer Steve Côté, places seals on top of barrels of maple syrup produced at Côté’s sugar shack. (Laura Pedersen/National Post)

In his boiling room, Côté uses a hand truck to roll a barrel of fresh syrup, too hot to touch, to a storage room. A security guard follows, and affixes to the barrel’s spout a tamper-proof seal: “Sticker 19057 of the FPAQ. Barrel 4094, produced 08/04/15, sealed 08/04/2015, Emilie Lacasse.” A court issued a “seizure before judgement” of Côté’s 2015 syrup, before the season even began. If he breaks these seals, Côté could be found in contempt of court.

Côté says he’s being treated like a criminal for doing what Quebecers have done for generations: Selling maple syrup. Attending a courthouse in Sherbrooke the other week over one of his innumerable battles, Côté ran into an old friend.

“I asked, ‘Why are you here?’ He said ‘pot.’ Later I saw him and asked, ‘What did you get?’ He said he got a $150 fine. And for selling maple syrup, I have a $424,000 fine. There is something wrong with this picture.”



Sap from maple trees travels through an intricate series of tubes to a “sugar shack,” where it is then boiled and turned into maple syrup. (Laura Pedersen/National Post)

Trading security for freedom

Natives taught Quebec settlers to boil sap in spring for sweet syrup, a labour-intensive job since maple sap is, at best, three per cent sugar.

“When I was a kid my father hooked up an ox to a sleigh and we picked up the syrup,” recalls Grenier, whose farm is in the heart of Quebec’s most bountiful syrup region, the Beauce.

She has laid out a lunch for the season for her visitors: white bread and buckwheat bread, hot from her oven; pea soup, deep-fried smoked pork jowls, ham baked in syrup, baked beans, new potatoes, sausages, coffee; and for dessert, whipped cream, maple syrup pie, maple ice cream and “des grand-père en sirop” — dough balls fried in syrup. Beside the spread rests a clear glass bottle with the first syrup of 2015.


“We got out of school and we went to the sugar shack. We lay on the ox’s back to ride home.”

A made-in-Quebec technological explosion has transformed the syrup-making process. Buckets hanging off trees are long gone; today, vacuum pumps pull sap through tubes and pipes to reservoirs. There, a reverse osmosis process extracts enough water from the sap to make a concentrate of about 12 per cent sugar. Producers then burn wood or oil, or use electricity, to boil the concentrate in evaporators. Out trickles maple syrup.

Thanks to these advances, global production has soared. Producers have forged into fresh markets. The federation, despite all the grumbling, has been a big part of that: Thanks to its marketing efforts, cookies, cakes and spreads with maple syrup are now big in Japan. In North America, it seems of late to be popping up an awful lot in recipes from smoothies to salads.

Cost of a can of maple syrup produced in Quebec.

Serge Beaulieu, a producer in Ormstown, south of Montreal, heads the maple syrup producer’s federation. He says the fickleness of Mother Nature inspired syrup makers to put in a supply management system.

“The year 2000 was a crisis,” he recalls. “Too much syrup. We had a surplus of 20 million pounds. The buyers only wanted to pay us 85 cents a pound. So we put the 20 million pounds in inventory, and then buyers paid us our price, which was $1.56 a pound. Then we put in place a quota system in 2004.”

Under the federation’s complicated system, producers receive a quota that limits how much they can produce, and they are not to receive direct payment for their syrup. Instead, the federation calculates the season’s fixed price and handles the sale to wholesalers. This season’s prices: $2.92/lb.

The federation pockets 12 cents per pound for its services: grading syrup, storage, promotion and marketing. The remaining money is supposed to find its way back to producers — eventually, and in stages.

Last June, the federation sent producers a cheque for 75 per cent of the 2014 season’s syrup’s value. In December, it parceled out another 13 per cent. In March 2015, they received three per cent. Altogether, producers got 91 per cent of the total value — minus the 12-cent per pound federation fee.

We get paid 100 per cent in New Brunswick, and in Quebec we are paid at 75 per cent

“The nine per cent that’s not sold goes in our reserves,” explains Rouillard. When it is sold, producers will get paid for it. The federation’s grandly-named Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve in Laurierville, Que. contains, right now, a record 68 million pounds of maple syrup — worth about $150-million.

Producers may keep 100 per cent of a sale only when they sell cans directly to the public, at the sugar shack. That’s also the only method producers are legally allowed to use to get around the federation entirely. They are permitted to sell cans directly to local supermarkets — but only by carving out the federation its 12-cent per pound fee.

Many producers dislike Quebec’s system because they can wait years to get fully paid. Many wonder where the money goes. “There is not only the mystery of the Virgin Mary in Quebec,” says producer Ghislaine Fortin. “There are a lot of mysteries in Quebec in the maple syrup industry.”

Maple syrup production across Quebec.

The federation insists that 75 per cent of Quebec’s 7,300 maple syrup producers support the supply management system. On his farm in Saint-Sylvestre not far from Ste-Clotilde, Richard Thérrien, who milks 60 dairy cows, has produced maple syrup for 35 years. He says the federation makes sense.

In the past, he says, “as soon as we had a good season the price plunged, and the buyers would stockpile the syrup. We had no tool for negotiation. Now we manage our inventory. The buyers want a regular supply. The price is maintained, and we know the revenue we will have.”

But other producers have voted with their feet and left the province. David Dostie, 36, made the syrup handed out to the Hollywood stars in swag bags at this year’s Academy Awards. He has 36,000 taps in Notre-Dame-des-Bois, Que.; last year he bought a sugar bush setup in Florenceville, N.B., where he now has 46,000 taps.

“I get the best of both worlds. I go to New Brunswick and expand, and I get the Quebec [influenced] price for New Brunswick syrup,” Dostie says. “We get paid 100 per cent in New Brunswick, and in Quebec we are paid at 75 per cent. I pay $30,000 in dues to the federation in Quebec; in New Brunswick I pay $1,200.”

Nancy Boucher and Pascal Dorval, Quebec maple syrup producers from the region of Lac-Mégantic who moved to New Brunswick last year to expand their maple syrup operation..
Nancy Boucher and Pascal Dorval, Quebec maple syrup producers from the region of Lac-Mégantic who moved to New Brunswick last year to expand their maple syrup operation. (Nancy Boucher/Handout)

The Quebec federation still owes him about $500,000, dating back to syrup of his that it has held in reserve since 2009. “They are going to have to find a way to pay us 100 per cent,” he says. “That’s why we went to New Brunswick. We are young and we want to expand.”

Nancy Boucher moved from Quebec to French-speaking Keswick in north New Brunswick last year, buying a big sugar bush operation with 60,000 taps.

“The cost of power is a lot higher but our taxes are lower” in New Brunswick, she says. She misses Quebec. “At the closest Walmart when I speak, the cashier replies in English.”

Still, she likes getting paid right away for her syrup, but concedes that Quebecers at least get some security in exchange for their freedom.

“The producers in Quebec don’t have to worry. Their production will always be bought [by the federation]. We don’t have the protection the Quebecers have.”


Normand Breton, who works with maple syrup producer Steve Côté, keeps a close eye on evaporator used to produce maple syrup at Côté's sugar shack in Sawyerville, Quebec.
Normand Breton, who works with maple syrup producer Steve Côté, keeps a close eye on evaporator used to produce maple syrup at Côté’s sugar shack in Sawyerville, QC. (Laura Pedersen/National Post)

Boom over the border

Early in the 19th century Yves Bernard’s great-grandfather tapped maple trees in St-Victor, the village next to Ste-Clotilde. Today he and his four brothers own Les Industries Bernard et Fils, a distributor that, with 50 employees, buys maple syrup from 1,000 producers and exports around the world.

Bernard recently opened a plant in Island Pound, Vt., and is building a network of U.S. suppliers. Yves Bernard, the president, predicts that in five years the United States, currently Quebec’s biggest market, will be self-sufficient in maple syrup.

U.S. maple syrup production in thousands of pounds.

“The States are growing,” says Bernard. “It’s supply and demand. It’s a free market. In Quebec, if I have 25,000 taps and I want to go to 50,000 taps, I am not allowed. In the States I have no restrictions and I can grow as much as I want.”

Asked whether he likes the Quebec system, Bernard says it’s too risky to share his honest opinion. “I am an authorized buyer; I can’t say anything because I could lose my buyer’s license. A lot of producers don’t want to speak out because they can get their quota cut.”

Would you accept not getting paid 20 per cent for your production?

The Quebec federation has asked New Brunswick and Ontario producers to join its supply management system. Both have said no.

Ray Bonenberg, of Pembroke, Ont., heads the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers’ Association. Ontario produces four-million litres of maple syrup but consumes 10-million litres, much of it imported from Quebec.

Asked about the Quebec system, he zeroes in on the payments held back by the federation. “Would you accept not getting paid 20 per cent for your production? It would stunt growth in Ontario.”

Jean-François Laplante heads the New Brunswick Maple Syrup Association. He loves Quebec’s price-setting system. “Quebec want us to join,” he says. “We don’t want to join because we have all the advantages and none of the disadvantages.”

He doesn’t want Quebec to change a thing.

“The people who complain didn’t know the old system,” he says. “The buyers controlled the price. It was very hard for banks to make loans to sugar shacks because the market was so fickle.”

Angèle Grenier stands in front of firewood that she split, which is used to boil maple syrup, at her property in Sainte-Clotilde, QC.
Angèle Grenier stands in front of firewood that she split, which is used to boil maple syrup, at her property in Sainte-Clotilde, QC. (Laura Pedersen/National Post)

‘Syrup is a sickness’

Dusk falls on Ste-Clotilde, a village of 600 with just 20 children in its school. In her sugar shack, Angèle Grenier wears a smile. After a very long, cold winter, it is finally “le temps des sucres” — sugaring-off season. Sap trickles into her reservoirs.

The phone rings. “Hey, the sap is running a lot,” Angèle Grenier says to her son-in-law on the other end. “Would you be able to be able to come and help me boil tonight?”

She uncorks a bottle of wine and lights her boiler. Sébastien Roy, a tall young man, arrives and feeds spruce, cedar, maple and poplar logs into the crackling fire. Clouds of steam rise into the starry Quebec night. Her husband and son come in to watch.

Along with hoses, pipes, valves and tanks, this sugar shack has rustic comforts, including the rear seat from an old car used as a couch. Her parents, Rosario Grenier and Fernande Clouthier, both 84 years old, pull up. Tonight, they will tour the sugar shacks of each of their four children. This one is the largest.

By court order Grenier must sell all this syrup through the federation, or face a $50,000 fine. Audy, the inspector, told her she will get paid about 75 per cent of the syrup’s value by July. Her appeal over the shutdown of her exports has a court date set for January.

“Maple syrup is a sickness,” Grenier says. “Even with the federation driving me nuts, this is where I want to be.”

pkuitenbrouwer@nationalpost.com

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