Strategic Engagement

Stakeholder engagement is a key component of the delivery of AGCO priority projects and decision-making. The AGCO shares information and educates stakeholders to ensure overall understanding of regulatory requirements and improve regulatory outcomes and compliance. This engagement supports the AGCO’s compliance-focused and risk-based regulatory approach with increased service quality and collaboration.

Stakeholder engagement, education, and training activities include hosting of webinars and national/international delegations, consultations and industry stakeholder information sessions as well as participation in industry related forums and conferences and facilitation of working groups.

TABLE 9 – Quarterly Strategic Engagement Activities

In addition to targeted industry outreach, the AGCO developed a comprehensive municipal engagement strategy to engage in a focused and coordinated manner with municipalities on its regulatory frameworks for liquor, cannabis and charitable gaming. The strategy included a municipal webinar series aimed at strengthening the AGCO’s relationship with municipalities by engaging on key AGCO regulatory activity topics and issues to address the interests of municipalities. Webinar topics ranged from explaining the role of the AGCO to education surrounding the charitable gaming regulatory framework and the newly regulated cannabis industry. Overall, there were over 900 municipal registrations for the four municipal webinars with an average participant satisfaction rate of 94%.

The 2018-2019 racing season also saw the first full year of implementation of two key reforms to the review of the Rules of Racing that arose out of the industry-wide “Moving Ahead: Horse Racing Regulation in Ontario” working group activities that took place in 2017:

• Measures to streamline the Equine Drug Program process, including changes to penalty guidelines so that they better reflect the severity of equine drug violations and better protect equine athletes. Preliminary results indicate that 94% of positive tests were resolved through a settlement process, and therefore without appeal to the Horse Racing Appeal Panel, compared to 31% in FY 2016/17; 17 of 18 positive tests from April 21 to Dec 31, 2018 were settled
• Standards-based rules related to temperature, including requirements for race cancellation and other measures intended to ensure the well-being of horses and people who may be impacted by extreme temperature. Performance measures related to goals such as enhanced race horse welfare and increased transparency regarding race cancellations were designed, and data collection is underway. 

During 2018-2019, the AGCO continued its engagement with industry stakeholders as it worked toward implementation of other key reforms explored as part of AGCO’s review of the Rules of Racing. This included:

• Receiving input from industry associations, racetrack management, veterinarians and other stakeholders to help inform new standards-based rules requiring that horses in Ontario are free of medications, as well as new provisions concerning the invalidating of claims in instances where a horse dies or is euthanized on the racetrack. Feedback received has informed the implementation and ongoing evaluation of these changes
• Insights from jockeys, racetrack management and medical professionals contributed to the design of a Concussion Protocol Pilot that is to be held at thoroughbred racetracks for the duration of the 2019 racing season. This protocol is intended to safeguard jockeys and race horses, and raise awareness and understanding of concussions and associated health risks.