Roundtable for non-SM Stakeholders of CFO?

Sustain Ontario is seeking to hold a Roundtable feedback session for all non-SM stakeholders of CFO on the allocation of Ontario's chicken quota.

In previous Blog postings (see Hidden & Stacked Meetings Not Fair to Ontario Stakeholders and Rearranging the Titanic's Deck Chairs ), I discussed the lack of meetings, hastily organized meetings, stacking of meetings with pro-SM attendees, and the hiding of meetings from Stakeholders, all so Chicken Farmers of Ontario ("CFO") gets the results they need to continue their oppressive chicken dynasty forever.

While ever so polite to the Supply Management Overlords so as to not ruffle their feathers, Sustain Ontario has carefully and politely proposed holding a Roundtable discussion of the issues surrounding the Small Flockers alternatives, affordable food, and locally produced food.  In their recent email to me and others, they stated:

Hi All,

I am writing to you because I know that you represent an interest group that has a stake in the issue of chicken quota. 

A few of us have attended the consultation meetings and are excited by the openness that we are seeing from the CFO, AOCP and the farm products marketing board for the first time. 

However, we were disappointed with the promotion and turn out we saw at the consultations and felt that there should be a "roundtable" conversation where each association is represented and has a chance to speak with Ministry representatives, Farm Products Marketing Commission and the CFO/AOCP in the room. 

We would like to hold this meeting before the end of March at OMAFRA so that there is a final chance to speak on this issue before any actions are taken.  We would like to ensure that all relevant stakeholders participate but are reaching out to allies first. 

The vision for the day would be to allow everyone to have 10-15 minutes to speak to their own perspective and the solutions they could see working. 

Please indicate your interest in participating by filling in the doodle poll below.  If you would like to suggest a group that I have missed, please feel free to email me.  Once we have a date, we will send out a more formal invitation.

I would hope that the agenda would be on the entire concept of Ontario's Supply Management System for chicken, rather than the artificially constructed "safe" topic of just the incremental allocation of future quota increases.

The email  was copied to Mr. Marc LeBerge, a Senior Policy Advisor, Economic Development Policy Branch, OMAFRA.  I assume Marc was chosen as he is the point man on Ontario's Local Food Strategy.  Marc previously did a 10 slide presentation to the Eastern Ontario Local Food Conference on Dec. 3, 2013, which is available on Slideshare.

Ontario's Local Food Act became law on Nov. 6, 2013 so that Slideshare was very freshly minted as of Dec. 2013.

Sustain Ontario is focused by building consensus by all Stakeholders, whenever possible.  Hopefully that philosophy will not be abused by the Chicken Mafia during these Roundtable discussions, if and when they occur.