Roses are red and violets are purple and sugar's sweet and so is maple surple - Roger Miller

Faced with a shortage of vital fluid, the great nation has decided that the only course of action would be to uncork some of the precious reserves it has laid up for just such a rainy day as this.

No, we're not talking about the US tapping into our strategic oil reserves. That's old news, and we don't deal in that. We're talking about Canada, the great nation to our north, and they have a shortage of their own. This is serious: they are short on maple syrup.

The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers has opened the stopper to allow 50 million pounds of their strategic syrup reserves. That's about half of their emergency stash.

70% of the world's maple syrup comes from Quebec. The US, where we know that there ain't no substitute for the real sweet thang, is Canada's biggest customer, but this year, as more people stayed home eating waffles, worldwide demand for real maple syrup jumped by 21%.

People are often surprised to hear that the goo sitting atop their pancakes is made from the sap of the maple tree. The sap is harvested by tapping a metal tap (so that's where they got that term) right into the tree's trunk. 

In Grandpa's era, a bucket was hung from the tap to catch those precious drips, but now, a network of plastic tubes and vacuums collects the drips and transports the product to a syrup refinery.

The trees will only yield sap under very specific weather conditions. This year's short and warm Spring resulted a very low flow, according to industry spokesperson Mrs Butterworth.

That was a fake! I hope you caught it.

But Helene Normandin is a real person. She is the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers' communications director, and she says, "That's why the reserve is made, to never miss maple syrup. And we won't miss maple syrup!" 

She sounds quite resolute about this winter's breakfasts, and she also is when discussing plans to avoid another shortage next year. 

"What we can figure at this moment is maybe the season here in Quebec will start a bit earlier in February, instead of March, and end earlier also," she said.

The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers will be sticking their taps into some 7 million more trees soon to refill the reserve tanks.

Syrup costs money, and money does not grow on trees. It does grow IN trees, however.