by SUSAN MANN

Ontario’s Premier and Agriculture Minister Kathleen Wynne will be discussing the importance of local food, along with bee mortalities and other matters when she attends her first federal, provincial/territorial agriculture ministers’ meeting later this month.

Wynne’s spokesperson, Gabrielle Gallant, says by email the agriculture minister is looking forward to attending the meeting. It’s being held in Halifax, Nova Scotia July 17 to 19.

For its part, the federal government didn’t have too much to say about the upcoming meeting. Other than releasing the dates, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada spokesman Patrick Girard says by email “unfortunately there aren’t any other details available at this point.”

On its website, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada says that since agriculture is a shared federal-provincial-territorial responsibility in Canada, agriculture ministers from across the country meet face-to-face a few times a year to talk about issues facing the farm and agri-food sectors and to make decisions about how to address the issues. The meetings include a one or two-day annual conference, usually held in the summer, and one or two other daylong meetings during the year. The meetings are held in different locations across Canada. BF