About Us

Who

LEOQ, OSF, ALP

Open to any other provincial sheep organization that wants to be part of the discussions.

What

National collaboration of interested provincial sheep organizations.

Where

Executive from the member provinces meet monthly via zoom calls.

When

The NSN came together in November 2016 and formalized the collaboration with an MOU in fall in 2018.

Why

Governed by a Memorandum of Understanding the NSN collaboration is an engagement between staff and elected leaders from the participating organizations utilizing existing resources. The intention of the collaboration is to:

Share information between the provincial organizations,
Identify key common issues of concern,
Identify potential opportunities, and
Collaborate on issues and opportunities to enhance efficiency in engaging common issues/programs.

How

The NSN has no budget. Staff from each organization work together to carry the workload. Expenses are shared by those that benefit from the investment, allowing members to prioritize their spending.

Additional Background Context

It is important to recognize that the NSN has reached out to the CSF to work together on specific issues, for example:

The Animal Health Canada working group – to discuss sharing costs of participating and representation. CSF said no,
Code of Practice Review – CSF said no, and
Pregnancy ultrasounding.

The goal was to find an issue that we could work together on as a first step of building bridges.

CSF has indicated that they will not speak to the NSN unless dues are paid, without giving an indication of what the dues would be, or what the return on investment for NSN would be, and
ROI is important, as it was part of the reason why NSN left i.e., questions were not be answered around how project funding for the Verified Sheep Program was being allocated. Producers were expressing concern about the CSF’s lack of response on the Scrapie Flock Eradication Program.
It’s important to recognize that the NSN has, on several occasions, reached out to the CSF to work together on specific issues (e.g., Code of Practice Review, Animal Health Canada Working Group, a new Sheep Value Chain Roundtable), and was turned down. The goal of this was to start building bridges and find a way to work together.
The NSN has also reached out to provincial chairs in the past to start a dialogue on finding ways to work together. Again, this request was turned down and recently the NSN was told that the CSF would not engage in discussions with us until after the license fee challenge currently underway in Ontario.
Notwithstanding the legacy issues, NSN members have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that expenditures are consistent with the their respective missions and mandates.