In Whistler, B.C., June 29, federal agriculture minister Chuck Strahl announced that the next generation of federal-provincial agriculture policy would be called Growing Forward.
It turns out that name could have created legal embarrassment for the department.
It already had been trademarked as a commercial product marketed by Winnipeg-based company Wolf Trax, which develops and sells micronutrient products for plants.
The department had not done a trademark search before unveiling the new program name.
While discussions between Agriculture Canada and Wolf Trax continue, it seems likely there will be no financial or name restriction implications for the department.
Read Also
Europe holds promise for Canadian lentils
Pulse Canada is trying to help boost lentil consumption in Europe, which is already the fourth largest market.
“Our legal advice is that the way it was done, designating a policy rather than a competitive commercial product, is not an infringement on the rights of the trademark holder,” Charles Slowey, director general of communications services and outreach for Agriculture Canada said Aug. 13. “This is not an infringement on a competitive goods and services product.”
In Winnipeg, Wolf Trax president Geoff Gyles agreed.
“We were surprised but we really don’t think it will have an impact on our business, which is largely export and involves many products,” he said. “I don’t see this as an issue.”
Still, Slowey said Agriculture Canada officials continue to supply company officials with information about how the name will be used to illustrate that it will not be a commercial rival.
He said the department did an internet search of the name when it was in the running as the replacement for the agricultural policy framework and saw that it had been used on other occasions.
“But we did not do a trademark search,” he said.
Growing Forward was registered as a trademark for a Wolf Trax micronutrient plant treatment product July 22, 2005. The registration process began Oct. 23, 2003.
The name of the new federal-provincial policy came from an internal Agriculture Canada employee name-that-program contest that drew more than 1,000 ideas earlier this year. A basket of departmental goodies was promised as a prize.
Winnipeg-based human resources branch team leader Mel Pilgrim suggested the winning entry and it was “selected as the most popular choice by employees and stakeholders,” according to an e-mail sent to all Agriculture Canada staff in the summer.
The name of the farm program also had a ring of familiarity to members of the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council that is co-funded by Agriculture Canada and industry to deal with staffing problems within labour-short agricultural sectors.
In January 2007, the recently created council issued a brochure titled “Growing Forward: Meeting the Human Resources Challenges Facing Agriculture Today and Tomorrow.”
Alberta farmer and interim board of directors’ chair Terry Murray said in an interview he did not remember the origins of the title.
“We had to strategically say we needed a name that connected us to agriculture and it was forward thinking and that’s what we came up with,” he said.
Although Pilgrim, who proposed the name in the Agriculture Canada contest, is involved in human resource issues within the department, he is not involved in the Agricultural Human Resource Council and was not part of its brochure naming process.
