Bernard Sévigny, former mayor of Sherbrooke, has been named Quebec's minister of agriculture, fisheries and food. The Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA) welcomed the appointment and called for a game plan for PQ proposals such as a larger agriculture budget and "net zero" on farmland loss.
Bernard Sévigny, a rookie MNA in the new Parti Québécois (PQ) government but with a long track record in public policy, has been named Quebec's minister of agriculture, fisheries and food. A former mayor of Sherbrooke (2009-2017) and president of the Union des municipalités du Québec (UMQ) toward the end of that period, Sévigny was sworn in on Wednesday alongside incoming premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon and the rest of the cabinet.
Sévigny won the riding of Richmond for the PQ against seven other candidates in the Oct. 5 election, after André Bachand, a former federal Progressive Conservative MP who had held the riding as a Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) MNA since 2018, decided not to run again.
From a Canadian perspective, Sévigny's appointment brings a new face to meetings of federal and provincial agriculture ministers ahead of the new five-year (2028-33) agricultural policy funding framework.
Before his time as mayor, Sévigny worked as a journalist for the TVA network and later as a lecturer and associate professor at the Université de Sherbrooke. After his defeat in the 2017 Sherbrooke municipal election, he worked as a consultant and, more recently, as an adviser to the provincial ministry of municipal affairs.
Although at first glance the caucus of the PQ's new minority government seemed to have little experience in the agricultural and food sectors, it is unlikely that Sévigny is completely unfamiliar with agricultural policy. His wife, Marie-Claude Bibeau, served as federal minister of agriculture and agri-food in then-prime minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet from 2019 to 2023. Bibeau left federal politics ahead of the 2025 election and was elected mayor of Sherbrooke last November.
In St-Pierre Plamondon's cabinet, Sévigny will also serve as minister responsible for l'Estrie, the administrative region covering the Eastern Townships of southern Quebec.
Quebec's Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA) congratulated Sévigny on Wednesday on his appointment and highlighted "interesting proposals" in the PQ platform. Among others, the PQ's proposals include increases to the provincial agriculture budget; applying a "net zero" principle to farmland loss; increasing support for farm transfers and reducing fiscal barriers to those transfers; and Quebec's withdrawal from the Alto high-speed rail project.
UPA president Martin Caron said in a statement that it is "imperative" for the incoming government to establish a game plan for each of its proposals. The three opposition parties in Quebec's legislative assembly — the Liberals, the Conservatives and Québec Solidaire — have not yet announced their agriculture critics. The new assembly's first sitting is scheduled to begin Nov. 17.
