District 4 Report: Mar'09

Another busy month has come and gone and we’re half way through the next one already. This has been a busy one. As mentioned last month we held committee meetings in February and as always - the more answers you come up with the more questions that need to be asked and the more answers need to be found.

We sent five board members to the Canadian Federation of Agriculture’s (CFA) Annual General Meeting during the last week of February. At this meeting many of our national resolutions were passed and will now be taken to the next level of lobbying. A new president of the CFA was elected, he is the past president of Quebec’s general farm organization UFA, Laurent Pellerin. A day by day report of the CFA AGM can be found by clicking the recent events link.

The Governance Committee met on March 6th at the APAS Head Office. Many bylaws and governance issues were reviewed. Two recommendations were taken to the board for immediate action while others need to be fleshed out more at our next governance meeting.

The Board met on March 7th in Regina. A full agenda was passed and the meeting began. Written reports from the president and general manager were presented. Both reported very busy schedules including many meetings with many RM’s, both current members and potential member and both indicating very positive results. Greg sits on the OFFS Committee (On Farm Food Safety), the Grains Innovations Round Table, Western Grains Standards Committee, and the Grains and Oilseed Committee and attended these meetings over the month, he gave a report on all four. He attended the CFA AGM were he was elected co-chair of the Grains and Oilseeds Committee and elected to the executive committee of CFA. Many media interviews were held while in Ottawa and when he returned to Regina. Nial helped co-ordinate the new radio ads that are currently running on many ag radio stations, sent out invoices to the RM’s and attended the AGM of the Sask Wildlife Federation, APAS is partnering with this group to put on the EG&S conference on March 25th and 26th in Regina.  The Board went over the Financial statement, heard and approved all committee reports, viewed our new monthly newsletter that also went out to the RM’s in their invoice packages. Both recommendations put forward by the Governance Committee were approved, one of which is proposing a timeline change for APAS, we will discuss this more with you at our up coming district meeting.  We discussed the upcoming district meetings and this summer’s Mid-Term Meeting, and some tentative dates.

 

The District 4 Meeting will be held in Legion Hall in Wadena on Tuesday, March 24th beginning at 10:00 am. At 1:00PM the meeting will be open to the public. Please contact anyone that you think might be interested in attending. This would include former reps, councils and reeves of R.M.s that were and are no longer members of APAS, prospective new member R.M.s as well as interested ratepayers of all of the above! Personal contact will go along way toward bridging the gaps!!

From March 11th – 13th Norm attended a Foresight Workshop on Climate Change and Agriculture in Calgary, out of 73 participants, mostly federal and provincial governments, only 5 participants were producers, without the general farm organizations in attendance the direction of this meeting would not have gone in a direction that would have done Canadian Agriculture any good. Many of the gov’t employees have a farm background but they have not been on the farm for many years and have lost touch with the innovations that have been carried out by the producers.

Next week Norm will be meeting with MP’s Andrew Shear and David Anderson on the Livestock issue, RM of Foam Lake Council and attending his own RM of Emerald Ratepayers’ Meeting in Wishart.  

Director David Spencer  attended the Board meeting in Regina on March 7th. March 9, 10, and 11 were spent at the SARM convention in Saskatoon. APAS  did a “Hospitality Night “ on Monday evening offering two VIP tickets to the Eagles as a door prize. It was a huge success with two hundred people attending, giving us a perfect chance for one on one conversations with the delegates. These delegates were from both member R.M.s, and prospective ones! Our booth at the SARM Trade Fair was also a great success. We had a lot of positive feedback, and many frank discussions. These events are an absolute necessity for APAS to attend!!  David will be in Ottawa March 19 and 20, at the National Forum on Seed. APAS will be at the Tisdale Rambler Rodeo and Trade Fair on April 3 and 4. Please drop by our booth, stay awhile, and encourage others to do so as well!!

March has been, and will continue to be busy. APAS is getting some good publicity, and seems to be “on a roll”.Let’s all do our part, and positively promote APAS, and the benefits of belonging!!

 Take Care;

 David and Norm