At the end of November, Seeds Canada will host its first in-person Semi-Annual Meeting. It might be our last as we look at the possibility of transitioning to a virtual semi-annual gathering.
First, some history: the in-person Semi-Annual Meeting was a longstanding tradition of the Canadian Seed Trade Association (CSTA), one of our four legacy organizations. When it formed last year, Seeds Canada decided to carry on with the meeting and it was held via Zoom due to COVID concerns.
Now, here we are, having turned the corner on the pandemic, and we look forward to seeing you in person Nov. 28-29 at the Westin Ottawa. The agenda will be an exciting one. We’re sending out an invite to the federal health and agriculture ministers, as both are deeply connected to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which is spearheading the Seed Regulatory Modernization process.
We believe it will be an excellent opportunity to hear from both of these ministers regarding what they think should result from the SRM process. Also, we hope to get their thoughts on our idea for an Independent Standards Setting Body (ISSB) for the seed sector, which was proposed at our annual meeting in Winnipeg in July.
We will, of course, be giving an update on where the SRM process is at from the Seeds Canada perspective. We’ll also be talking about the Policy Framework and ISSB idea after we spent the summer and early fall meeting with members, stakeholders and partners about those policy pieces, including on an October SRM update webinar that enjoyed excellent attendance. We’ll also host meetings of our policy and issues committees.
Finally, we have the pleasure of presenting the Plant Breeding and Genetics Award — sponsored by Seeds Canada and Germination and given every year to an outstanding plant breeder — to Istvan Rajcan of the University of Guelph.
It will no doubt be an important and enjoyable in-person gathering.
That said, as technology has progressed to allow virtual meetings and economic factors like inflation result in rising fuel and travel costs, we’ve been discussing the possibility of moving our Semi-Annual Meeting to a virtual format beginning in 2023. We look forward to member feedback on this idea.
The in-person Semi-Annual Meeting was an important CSTA event for many years, at a time when some things just couldn’t be done over snail mail and telephone. However, now that the internet has changed everything in terms of what we can accomplish remotely, it only makes sense to possibly make this event a virtual one moving forward.
Our 2021 virtual Semi-Annual enjoyed significant participation, and we don’t have any reason to believe moving this gathering to a virtual format permanently would be detrimental in any way to the discussions.
Quite the opposite; the convenience and low cost of the virtual format means even more people can participate without being away from home for several days and incurring expensive travel costs — especially considering the meeting takes place just four months after the in-person annual meeting each year.
I look forward to seeing our members at the end of November. Should we decide to make this meeting virtual starting in 2023, this year’s meeting will be one for the history books. See you in Ottawa! Registration will be open soon. Bookmark seeds-canada.ca/en/2022-semi-annual-meeting/ and stay tuned for details!
