Welcome to the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association Annual General Meeting (AGM). This year our theme is “Progress Starts with Partnership”. While this statement is true, I would like to offer you my view on how it applies to the Ontario beef business, and will also do so in my address to the convention.

Ontario Cattle Feeders’ Association

This year, over the late summer and early fall, executive from the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association (OCA), and Ontario Cattle Feeders’ Association (OCFA) met to discuss how we could better coordinate our efforts for the benefit of both associations. A few short years ago, meetings such as these would not have been possible.

However, both associations have been working closely together on items of mutual interest, and both associations felt that there were benefits to better defining our respective mandates. The outcome of these meetings was announced in the Ontario Farmer so that our memberships would be clear on our roles. The OCFA will concentrate its efforts on the marketing of Ontario Corn-Fed Beef. OCA, on the other hand, will be the one voice for beef farmers in Ontario with respect to policy and government lobbying. As outlined in the President’s Message, the OCA Board encourages members of the OCFA to stand for election on our Feedlot Committee, or the Board itself.

Lobbying

Once more we promoted beef at Queen’s Park, with our annual Ontario Corn-Fed Beef barbecue. This year your Directors attended breakfast meetings with the Liberal rural caucus and the Progressive Conservative rural caucus. We held a breakfast meeting in Ottawa for Ontario’s Conservative Party of Canada Members of Parliament (MPs), described for them the state of our industry, and promoted our requests of them to help support our industry in Ontario. Your President, Gord Hardy, had given a similar message previously to the Standing Committee on Agriculture in Ottawa. Unfortunately, I do not believe that we have strong partnerships with our Ontario MPs and Members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs), and we have made little progress on advancing our issues over the past year. You should address this concern with your MPs and MPPs.

In part to address this, we have joined a partnership with other non-supply managed commodity associations , and are working together to promote a new Business Risk Management strategy, patterned off of the grains and oilseeds Risk Management Program, which the province already supports. I’m sure that by the time that our AGM rolls around, we will have more information on our progress on this front.

Promoting Ontario Beef

I am convinced, however, that ultimate success and long-term sustainability for our industry will only be achieved when we could theoretically complete our theme statement to read, “Progress Starts with Partnership with Our Ontario Consumer”. We must remember that we can produce a tremendous product, and we must promote that fact to the final customer. We must listen to our customer, and produce exactly the product that they want. Only by building a strong bond between Ontario farmers, and Ontario consumers, will we take control of our destiny, and begin to see lasting progress. To this end, OCA recently signed a licence agreement with Foodland Ontario, a brand which has thirty years of consumer acceptance behind it. We have applied for shared funding from OMAFRA to work on the promotion of Ontario beef - in Ontario, and we anticipate hearing about the success of that application in time for the AGM. At that time, we will be able to share some of the activities we hope to undertake to strengthen our partnership with our customer.

Partnerships are not easy. Many of you are in partnerships, and know that this can be true. They involve compromise and change. They also involve giving up some independence, and some old ways of doing things. However, it is my opinion that we need to work on our partnerships in order to enjoy progress and success in our businesses.

Thank you. It is a pleasure working for you.

Dave Stewart, OCA Executive Director