Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Quebec wants chicken concessions


The chairman of the Quebec chicken marketing board says in a newsletter to members that he’s holding out for an increase as part of a new deal to carve national production into provincial shares.

The provincial boards have agreed in principle to allow “differential growth” and have used population increases as a yardstick.

That will give Ontario and Alberta most of the increases, but Quebec would lose some market share.

Now Quebec is saying it wants a larger share based on the situation in Eastern Ontario where decades ago a number of chicken farms were established without quota to market birds to processors in Quebec.

When the Ontario chicken board discovered those barns, it tried to shut them down. There was a political crisis and the temporary solution was the creation of national quota administered by the national agency for those Eastern Ontario producers.

Later the Ontario board incorporated their production into the Ontario quota system, but in practice the birds continued to be marketed to processors in Quebec.

When Ontario and Quebec reached a new deal to stop inter-provincial trade in live birds, these Eastern Ontario farmers were part of the solution. About 700,000 units of quota moved from Ontario to Quebec.

Now the Quebec marketing board chairman says that’s not enough. He wants closer to 2.5 million units to be shifted from Ontario to Quebec, a total that is closer to actual production from the farms in Eastern Ontario.

This new demand is linked to the new allocation to provinces made by the national agency, not to the no-trade pact between Ontario and Quebec.

And the Quebec chairman is linking this demand to another argument – that the population of the Ottawa Valley and Eastern Ontario ought to be considered part of Quebec’s allocation from the national agency, not Ontario’s.

On that basis, Ontario would not gain any increase in market share and Quebec would not lose, but gain, market share.

This is sure to be one of the hottest issues when the provincial marketing boards meet in Ottawa this week.

The first meetings will be of the marketing boards only. Later there will be meetings that involve industry partners, such as processors and further processors.

None of this information about Alberta, Ontario and Quebec has been included in newsletters from the Ontario chicken board, or posted on its website.

In a related move, the association that represents small-scale chicken processors in Quebec has written an open letter to the association that represents the large-volume chicken processors complaining that the Ontario-Quebec ban on trade in live birds, combined with aggressive purchasing of Quebec birds by Nadeau Poultry Ltd. of New Brunswick, is leaving them short of enough birds to meet their needs.

They say they understand that Olymel and Maple Lodge Farms are in a battle for birds to supply their processing plants in New Brunswick, but say they are suffering as innocent victims.

They are pressuring the Quebec processors and marketing board to either get more birds from Ontario or find them in Quebec to meet their needs.

While the small-scale processors in Quebec have a recognized association to negotiate, the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission has refused to give a similar organization for small-volume processors in Ontario status and membership on the Chicken Industry Advisory Committee it chairs.