Report of
GoOFY representative to the Organic Federation of Canada (OFC) interim board.

Prepared
by: Claire Desmarais

Date: October 28th, 2007

In November
of 2006, I attended the CORC first
face to face meeting held in Saskatoon.

Activities
for 2006-7:

OFC has
been meeting every month by teleconference call, except for some of the summer
months when farming operations kept many of the representatives busy on their
farms.

Some
achievements:

-after
our meeting in November of 2006, where the focus was to present a paper to the
CFIA with our concerns regarding the Organic Regulation, we were pleased to see
that all of our concerns were addressed. These are laid out in Paddy Doherty’s Progress Report which can be
found on the COABC website.

-in January, the money to finance the next revision round of the Canada
Organic Standard was approved and the Canadian General Standard Board started
work on this.

-in
March 2007, we had to change our name from CORC
(Canadian Organic Regulation Council) to Organic Federation of Canada/Federation
biologique de Canada (OFC/FBC) because of some regulation regarding the use of
the word regulation. OFC was incorporated as a not-for-profit society in
November of 2006, and it took some months to process the application.

-to
help OFC work with the Canada Organic Office (COO) to improve the Organic
Products Regulation to meet the needs of the organic community, OFC developed a
committee to liaise with the COO. Other members were and are invited to join
this committee, as the need may be, so all of the organic community feels it is
recognized and heard. This committee meets with the COO weekly.

-OFC received a request from COABC that there should be a national Brand
Name List of approve inputs for organic production: a committee was formed to
work on this.

-In April, it was determined that the regulation would go through
another gazetting process happening in November 2007, with a 90-day comment
period. Most of the issues revolve around labelling.

-CFIA told the COO liaison committee that they would use the Consumer
Packaging and Labelling Act to enforce the Organic Products Regulation in
provinces that do no enact an organic regulation.

-A stream of commerce policy paper was written.

-OFC wrote a letter to Consumer Protection Fair Labelling Practices
Program, stating they do not support the use of Natural Sodium Nitrate (Chilean
nitrate) in organic agriculture. Some Canadian importers maintain that imported
organic products grown using Chilean nitrate are needed to fill the demand for
organic produce.

-We
recommended the following cities to COO for consultations on the Regulation and
Quality Management System: Truro, N.S., Drummondville,
Quebec,

Guelp,
Ont., Saskatoon or Regina,
Sask., Vancouver.
We still haven’t heard where and when these will happen.

-National
Brand Name input Directory: CB’s will be asked to support this with a
per/certified member fee.

OFC hired a
coordinator on October 1st, Nicole
Boudreau from Quebec.
She will be working with implementing the plans stated in the ACAAF
application. Main focus of the application was to get provinces to implement
strong regional organizations to represent the organic industry, much like SOD
does in Sask,
and COABC in BC.

Our first
AGM is on November 22nd in Ottawa,
to coincide with the second round of the CGSB meetings. Many of the OFC
directors are also on this board. There, the interim directors will be
appointing the members of OFC. GoOFY needs to fill out an application and appoint
their director and alternate. Also, the ex-officio government representative
has to send a letter to ask to be on the board.  Directors will be appointed for staggered
two year terms.