Advocacy 101: Empowering Ontario's Food and Beverage Processing Industry

Welcome to another episode of The Food and Beverage Processor Forum, the podcast where we explore the foremost issues that matter to food and beverage processing businesses in Ontario. We have a great episode for you today as we delve into everybody's favourite topic, political advocacy.

For businesses in the industry, understanding how to effectively engage in political advocacy can be the key to driving positive change not just for you, but also for the industry at large. And effective advocacy can be employed in a number of ways, to influence policy decisions, remove red tape and barriers, build relationships with policy makers, protect business interests, drive change and innovation within the industry, address existential challenges such as labour shortages, and so much more.

Today, we are joined by two familiar figures within the field of political advocacy, who will shed light on how to take your first steps into advocating for your interests.

Our first guest is not quite a guest at all, but rather my colleague and co-host, Christopher Conway, the CEO of Food and Beverage Ontario. Christopher brings extensive experience and a deep understanding of the food and beverage sector in Ontario. He has a proven track record of fostering collaboration among industry stakeholders and driving growth and innovation. Chris has over 20 years experience in advocacy, government relations, and communications. He's been a panelist and speaker at numerous conferences in Canada and internationally. This includes making deputations in front of all three levels of government: municipal, provincial and federal. He's worked in industry associations since 2004, and prior to taking the reins at FBO spent  three years as President of Concrete Ontario as well as CEO of Career Colleges Ontario.

He also worked on Parliament Hill for six years. During that time, he worked with legislative and regulatory issues for MPs and Ministers including in the office of the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada.

Our second guest is Kristina Farrell, the CEO of Food and Beverage Canada (FBC-ABC). Kristina has an impressive background in government relations and agri-food policy, recognized as one of The Hill Times Top 100 Lobbyists for 2023. In addition to her role, some of you may recognize her work in advocating for significant changes to the Temporary Foreign Workers Program that benefit the industry. Prior to her current role at FBC, Kristina spent 7 years at Temple Scott Associates, starting as a consultant in 2017 and later becoming the Director (Government and Public Relations). At Temple Scott, she developed and executed government relations and public affairs strategies for a number of organizations, including Food and Beverage Canada, Chicken Farmers of Canada, the Canadian Association for Neuroscience, and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada, just to name a few. This in addition to severing as  Food and Beverage Canada's Director of Communications.

Prior to her time at Temple Scott, Kristina worked as a Junior Analyst for the United Nations (UN) division of Global Affairs Canada.

In today's episode, we'll discuss the importance of political advocacy, the steps businesses can take to get started, and the resources available to support these efforts. We'll explore the challenges and opportunities that come with engaging in the legislative process and how to effectively communicate your business needs to policymakers.

About Food and Beverage Ontario

Food and Beverage Ontario is a not-for-profit leadership organization dedicated to advancing the interests of Ontario's food and beverage processors. The organization's focus is on the success, prosperity and growth of the food and beverage processing sector - a $40 billion industry and a major contributor to the province's economy.

To learn more about Food and Beverage Ontario, visit https://foodandb