Article content continued

Although a recent Quebec government report warned the system for selling maple syrup is strangling the province’s industry and recommended that the cartel be broken up, the federation continues to wield its power. It is still charging, investigating and pursuing syrup producers who question its control, and it still searches their sugar shacks, impounds syrup and threatens to seize their farms.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it? Only in Quebec do people behave like this,” Nicole Varin said. “The federation wants to destroy our entrepreneurial spirit. If I have to work for someone else, I’ll go work at Canadian Tire.”

“If I have to work for someone else, I’ll go work at Canadian Tire”

The Varins are just one of about 50 producers locked in various pitched battle across Quebec with the federation, which wants the Varins and others to pay it 12 cents — set to jump to 14.75 cents next year — for every pound of syrup they sell to retailers.

Several maple syrup producers say that the accumulation of fines and lawsuits could force them to hand over the keys to their sugar shacks and the deeds to their sugar bushes to their creditors.

The stakes are high because maple syrup is a big and very profitable business: oil sells for US$55 a barrel; maple syrup fetches US$1,200 a barrel.

Quebec is effectively the OPEC of maple syrup, producing about 70 per cent of the global supply, and it holds about $240 million of syrup in its Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve in Laurierville, Que.

But the maple syrup federation’s rules — which decide who can tap maples and how many, force farmers to sell all syrup (except small containers sold at the sugar shack) through its system, pay producers and set syrup prices — have come under increasing fire.