Canada’s Maple Syrup ‘Rebels’
14th December 2015
The problem for Mrs Grenier, and Quebec’s other so-called “maple syrup rebels”, is that they cannot freely sell their syrup.
Instead, since 1990 they have been legally required to hand over the bulk of what they produce to the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (which in French-speaking Quebec is abbreviated to FPAQ).
Backed by the Canadian civil courts, the federation has the monopoly for selling Quebecois maple syrup on the wholesale market, and for exporting it outside the province. It sets the price for how much it pays producers, and it charges them a 12% fee per pound of syrup.
Producers are only allowed to sell independently a very small amount of syrup, to visitors to their farm, or to their local supermarket. And then they still have to pay the 12% commission to the FPAQ.
The United States government operated a similar legally-enforced cartel with respect to raisins, which (thank God) has been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2015.
Canadians don’t have that protection.