Quebec’s provincial cabinet has tapped Deputy Ag Minister Michel Saint-Pierre as the government’s point man on reworking income security programming for Quebec farmers.
Saint-Pierre was appointed Thursday as associate general secretary to the provincial executive council, effective May 17. His mandate, the province said, will also involve concluding a new agreement on the operation of La Financiere agricole du Quebec (FAQ) in 2009.
Saint-Pierre’s new mandates as the province’s representative follow the release of the Pronovost report on the future of the provincial agri-food industry.
That report, released in February, offered several recommendations on the operation of FAQ as well as the provincial Farm Income Stabilization Insurance (FISI) program, including, among others:
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- gradually evolving FISI into a universal support program for farm businesses, but with tighter criteria to ensure fair treatment and avoid overcompensation, with annually indexed production costs and an annual compensation cap of $150,000 per farm;
- putting this new support program into place as soon as possible for FISI-ineligible types of ag production outside of supply-managed sectors;
- allowing for additional supports outside the $150,000 basic support cap for farms dealing with certain climate conditions and difficult “biophysical characteristics,” as well as those farms taking on certain environmental farm practices;
- making all farm support, income stabilization and property tax breaks contingent on “cross compliance” with environmental regulations, best management practices and development of a farm-level agro-environmental report;
- immediately modifying the FAQ board to comply with provincial legislation on governance of state-owned enterprises; and
- tightening La Financiere agricole’s criteria for funding farmers’ training, with the minimum end goal of a college ag diploma or equivalent.
The Pronovost report had noted FISI tends to mask market signals that otherwise would urge farmers to cut costs and shift production to other commodities and “does not encourage farmers to improve.”
Provincial Ag Minister Laurent Lessard said in a release Thursday that Saint-Pierre was one of the bureaucrats to spearhead the establishment of the Pronovost commission in 2006 and is the ideal candidate to take on this challenge from Premier Jean Charest.
