Syrup producers, woodlot owners decry lack of help after derecho

A handful of woodlot owners and maple syrup producers east of Ottawa say they've been left in a sticky spot without much government help after May's powerful derecho hit their trees especially hard.

Jules Rochon, a retired public servant and president of the eastern branch of the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers Association, operates a small-scale, 2,500-tap maple bush with his wife in Larose Forest, southeast of Hammond in Clarence-Rockland, Ont.

He said his family lost almost one-third of their trees during the windstorm and since many were strong producers of sap, they're worried they could lose up to 40 per cent of the yield this coming spring.

So far, he's cut and piled 350 cords of wood from the fallen trees.

"Every one of those logs were giving me a litre of syrup every year. That's for the next 35 years that I will not have that revenue," Rochon told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning last week.

Rochon said he feels the province has not been fair to the woodlot owners hit hard by the derecho.

Assessment teams from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing ruled that eastern Ontario did not qualify for disaster recovery assistance. In the province, only Uxbridge near Toronto was deemed eligible.

After the floods in 2017 and 2019 the province helped some people who didn't have insurance, Rochon said. After the ice storm in 1998, assistance programs were established in weeks.

"It's a small business, it's an essential service. We are providing food, why can we not be covered like they are?" he said.

"It makes me feel like, OK, we're left alone here. I think Prescott-Russell is the black sheep of Ontario. No funds for us here."

Years to finish cleanup

Rochon and his partner have been leaning on family and friends to help clean up all the felled trees and sap tubing. He said if he'd been able to hire people, the work would be done by now, and would like financial help to do that.

At the rate he's going, he said it will take many years to finish.

Jean Saint-Pierre is vice-president of Boisés Est, a French association of private woodlot owners in eastern Ontario.

He said about 400 hectares of woodlots were severely damaged in the derecho around Alfred and Plantagenet, Ont., east of Ottawa.

"We feel that people are not listening. They don't seem to want to understand the impact of that derecho to hundreds of people … and it is very unfortunate because we all need to help each other whenever there is a natural disaster that occurs," Saint-Pierre said.

The woodlots may be privately owned, he said, but they provide benefits for everyone by sequestering carbon, sustaining biodiversity, stabilizing the water table and more.

Forest cover in the region was already low at about 20 per cent, he said. Some woodlot owners have the means, equipment and knowledge to fix up and reforest, but others don't, he added.

The Ministry of Agriculture, F­­­­ood and Rural Affairs said in a statement that farmers can access business risk management programs through an agency called Agricorp.

Rochon said while syrup producers are mentioned by name in those risk management programs, the actual criteria for them to apply has not yet been developed.

He also said producers have to be paying into the program before an extreme weather event occurs to be eligible for assistance and that isn't financially feasible for most smaller producers.

Glengarry-Prescott-Russell MPP Stéphane Sarrazin did not respond to a request for comment.