The Ontario board won a challenge it filed with the Farm Products Council of Canada in March, then two organizations filed complaints in September.
A hearing that was scheduled for Jan. 18 was postponed and a new date has yet to be set.
In its letter to the council, the Ontario turkey board said the national agency was supposed to change the way it carves up the national target for production into provincial shares, but what it actually did was apply a slightly-amended formula that hardly changed the allocations.
Ontario’s share increased by only three-tenths of one per cent.
The situation for turkeys is similar to long-standing complaints by Ontario’s chicken marketing board that finally, after years of intense lobbying and complaining, resulted in a new formula that gives Ontario more than its traditional percentage share when production targets increase.
Since then Ontario’s chicken industry has been getting more production rights than before and it has implemented new policies providing space for non-quota-holding farmers to raise a few turkeys and for new-entrant entrepreneurs to be granted quota to explore production and processing for niche markets.
In the case of turkeys, the Ontario board asked in its complaint filed after production allocations were set in March for two million additional kilograms of production quota.
It said it’s needed to supply processors with enough turkeys for further processing to meet demand, some of it from distributors with national reach.
As a temporary, one-off measure, the national agency granted Ontario nine million kilograms of additional quota.
That is the issue the processors have raised in their complaint. They said the agency did not follow normal practice to consult other stakeholders and to consult data to inform its decision.
The Ontario turkey board argues that by continuing to sprinkle quota across the country according to historic market shares means Ontario is chronically short while some other provinces have more than they need.
The Ontario board and processors are asking the national council to decline the Turkey Farmers of Canada (national agency) proposal for production targets and provincial allocations for the 2022-23 quota year.
If the council approves that request, it will put pressure on the national agency to amend the formula it uses to carve up national production targets into provincial shares.
