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| | | OLA’s Strategic Issues In September, 2005, OLA received funding support for one-year from the Laidlaw Foundation to do advocacy on organic lawncare and landscaping issues. This funding furthers Laidlaw’s efforts to address children’s health and the environment. OLA’s proposal highlighted research linking pesticide use with detrimental effects on children’s health. OLA’s goal: Entrench meaningful and enforceable requirements for organic lawncare practices in law and policy, with particular attention to areas used by children and their families. Our objective is to leverage action from all three levels of government that will improve consumer confidence and information and facilitate access and uptake of organic lawn/garden care. Six Intended Outcomes:a) Federal – A coordinated effort to take one complaint to the Competition Bureau regarding unfair use of terminology such as “natural” and “organic” by service providers who are not in fact delivering a natural or organic service to the consumer and to issue at least three cease and desist letters to chain companies using these practices.b) Provincial – To advocate for and achieve the provincial MOE adapting the requirement for posting of “pesticides” signs for low impact, organic products, such as corn gluten and acetic acid to meet a new reality that this requirement is confusing to consumers and service providers and obscures the use of very harmful pesticides and chemicals. The preferred outcome will be to eliminate this requirement. In the alternative, to propose and achieve altered posting requirements which clearly distinguish low impact organic products from harmful pesticides.c) Municipal – To provide advice and support and informed opinion based on our members’ experience and knowledge of organic lawncare and landscaping techniques to five municipal councils and staff regulatory-making exercises in the form of a brief and presentation and by participating in three regulation consultations on behalf of the organic landcare industry.d) Industry standards – To develop and advocate for a certifiable list of organic lawncare and landscaping standards that would be capable of third party verification and to develop a position paper for OLA on this that would be used to either advocate for national government standards, such as the Canadian Standards Board or be used to develop private third party standards as in Quebec. This outcome would be used to leverage further support to implement a project in Ontario.e) Partnerships – To achieve stronger, more collaborative partnerships with a number of organizations that OLA has had a relationship with through cross membership and participation in the OLA conference, but through joint efforts in the above initiatives, will reinforce strong networking and cross fertilization of ideas and personnel. In particular, Quebec Committee for Alternatives to Pesticides, Canadian Environmental Law Association, and CAPE. Also, continue to strengthen our relationship with the Organic Conference at Guelph, the National roundtable on organics and other organic sector members. f) Membership engagement – To achieve a more meaningful level of involvement from a number of OLA members who are asking that OLA take on the above initiatives and to provide a framework for this involvement. The outcome would be a strong strategic issues committee with up to 10 active members participating in consultations and review of draft materials, as well as participating in public forums and media interviews on the above issues. | | |
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