Fun fact this reserve is actually run by Quebec, not the federal government of Canada. Additionally, this is also the reserve that was the victim of the largest hiest in Canadian history [0].<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Heist" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Hei...</a>
This is a funny parallel to the U.S. oil reserve news recently. The Canadian maple syrup market is a fascinating one. I've read before that maple syrup farmers in Québec legally must sell their maple syrup through a central organization, so maple syrup smuggling by farmers into other provinces isn't unheard of. It's almost like a maple syrup mafia.
It’s not a “strategic reserve” in the traditional sense. Typically a strategic reserve is a store held by a country to survive through difficult circumstances. The reserve here is basically overproduction from Quebec’s maple syrup cartel. There is a state government-granted monopoly to this cartel, which forces all syrup producers to only sell via the cartel, at amounts allocated to each producer by the cartel. Any excess is held in this reserve across various warehouses, and it is only sold in years of low production or unusual demand that exceeds production.<p>I personally find the idea of this cartel really disagreeable. There’s a Netflix documentary series that covers the background here (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7909196/" rel="nofollow">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7909196/</a>), and the person running the cartel is basically an egotistic power hoarder whose family managed to steer the state government into implementing this cartel to the benefit of a few producers, which then forced every other producer to join in. Small farmers who want to operate outside the cartel cannot do so. The lady in the documentary tries to get around it by selling her small production to distributors from other states instead of the cartel, but the well-funded cartel uses their legal team to shut her down and basically drive her to financial ruin.<p>One way to get around the cartel is to buy maple syrup from Vermont.
I actually thought this thread was going to be about CIRA’s amazing set of Canadian stock photos, which includes references to the strategic maple syrup reserve:
<a href="https://petapixel.com/2020/01/23/canadian-internet-authority-launches-free-stock-photo-library-full-of-funny-stereotypes/" rel="nofollow">https://petapixel.com/2020/01/23/canadian-internet-authority...</a>
I prefer Aunt Jemimah or Mrs Buttersworth to good, real, maple syrup.<p>I really enjoy telling people because it just somehow seems to really annoy people.<p>In almost every other category of food I go for high quality but with maple syrup the bottom of the barrel is the best.
I hope the second photo ( <a href="https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/11/25/gettyimages-57204082-c4aa3dca27cc707ed68af63e88a866979fbb97f7-s1600-c85.webp" rel="nofollow">https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/11/25/gettyimages-5720...</a> ) doesn't suggest that sap is collected with leaded pipes.
As a Canadian, I’ve had maple syrup less than a dozen times in my life. It plays no part of my life, or my families or friends. So the fact that it’s tied to Canada is strictly a foreign marketing thing I think. I actually have less association with maple syrup than I do with the clubbing of baby seals controversy which is zero as well.<p>I get a kick out of seeing all the maple syrup products at YYZ or YVR but you never see those same products anywhere inside Canada. Something like Hockey is more genuinely a strong Canadian passion but maple syrup is practically nil except to the maple syrup producers.