The end of August produced a moving experience for staff at the headquarters of Canada’s largest farm lobby group.
Literally.
On Aug. 24, moving trucks rolled south from the office tower offices near Parliament Hill that the Canadian Federation of Agriculture has occupied for more than two decades to a renovated three-storey building 15 blocks south of Parliament that the CFA and several of its supply management members combined to buy.
“It is an awesome building,” said CFA communications director Janice Hall. “We are very comfortable here.”
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For more recent employees like her, the move was a crash course in CFA history.
Staff had to pack the CFA library and archives and discovered a treasure trove of records for the federation’s 73-year history. There were photos, videos and documents.
“It gave us a chance to get a glimpse of some of the long history of this organization,” said Hall.
Increased office rent and the need for more space for the CFA, Dairy Farmers of Canada, Egg Farmers of Canada and the Canadian Hatching Egg Producers helped prompt the move.
However, it also cuts a proximity link between the CFA and the Canadian Pork Council that has existed since they decided to share a downtown office 22 years ago. At one time, the CFA’s second-in-command also ran the CPC office.
But pork officials decided that moving farther away from Parliament Hill did not suit their purposes so Nov. 1, they will move their head office to another office tower near Parliament Hill.
It will create a physical distance between the two groups.
Last year, the CPC decided that while remaining a member of the CFA, it also would create some policy distance between them when it also joined the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance. The alliance is an aggressive trade liberalization lobby that urges the Canadian government to oppose CFA policy by compromising on supply management import protections in the interests of a stronger trade-inducing World Trade Organization deal.
The price of the CFA’s partial ownership of the $4.6 million building on the southern edge of Ottawa’s Centretown district was to assume a mortgage debt of $524,000. Monthly payments of $3,280 until 2017 will be less than rent in its former office. Moving costs, set at $30,000, were included in the 2008 budget.
In 2009, the CFA is projecting a $48,632 deficit in a budget of $1.4 million. Fee assessments on CFA provincial and commodity members will increase three percent to total more than $1.1 million next year.
