Quebec names new deputy ag minister

A former deputy minister for Quebec’s ministry of agriculture, food and fisheries has returned to the post after a few years in the consulting business.

Marc Dion, 67, was announced Tuesday as deputy minister effective March 1, replacing Fernand Archambault as the ministry’s lead bureaucrat.

Dion, a consultant in private practice since 2011, had previously served as deputy agriculture minister from 2008 to 2011 under ministers Laurent Lessard and Claude Bechard.

Lessard was reappointed to the agriculture minister’s post last month, when Pierre Paradis, the ag minister since 2014, was removed from the post and from the Liberal caucus.

No reason was given in Tuesday’s announcement for Archambault’s exit from the deputy minister post, which he had held since 2014.

Lessard, however, was quoted last week in an interview with the Union des producteurs agricoles’ (UPA) newspaper, La Terre de chez nous, as pledging a “housecleaning” in the ag ministry.

Archambault was also well known as a close associate of Paradis. He had previously served as Paradis’ chief of staff in the environment and municipal affairs ministries and held management-level posts in several other provincial ministries.

Dion, a longtime agriculture ministry staffer, has also previously served in several associate deputy minister posts, with responsibilities for aquaculture, research and development, economic affairs and agricultural policy. — AGCanada.com Network