From controversial digitization to regulatory reform, Miller’s 15-year tenure changed how Canada’s seed certification system operates.
After 15 years with the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association (CSGA), including the last five as executive director, Doug Miller is stepping down — and leaving behind an organization that looks meaningfully different than the one he joined.
Miller describes the decision as deeply personal. “When you spend 15 years with any organization, it speaks to how great of a place it is,” he says, pointing to the staff, board, and members as the reason the job felt like home.
That loyalty is telling. In the seed world, tenure isn’t just a résumé line — it’s a signal that you stayed long enough to earn trust, absorb complexity, and still have the energy to push change through a system that doesn’t always welcome it.
A Leader Who Made the Organization Move
CSGA President Glenn Logan remembers the moment Miller stepped into the executive director role as a pivot point.
“I pushed pretty hard to get Doug to come on as our executive director,” Logan says. “And when he did, it was like a breath of fresh air.”
Logan is quick to clarify that the EDs before Miller weren’t inferior. It’s just that Miller brought a different kind of leadership engine.
“Doug has a technical mind, an innovative bent to him,” Logan says.
It’s not a small statement coming from the association’s president, and it gets at something that’s often missed when people talk about agricultural leadership: the best leaders aren’t always the most political. Sometimes they’re the ones who can translate complexity into momentum.
The Misunderstood Role at the Heart of Canada’s Seed System
One of Miller’s consistent priorities has been correcting a persistent misconception about what CSGA is.
To many, it’s easy to lump CSGA into the category of lobby or grower groups. But Miller has repeatedly emphasized that CSGA is, at its core, a certification body that co-regulates with the Government of Canada to deliver seed certification — a critical public-good service.
That distinction matters more now than ever, because Miller’s tenure has coincided with some of the most consequential seed policy shifts in decades, most notably seed regulatory modernization (SRM).
Stepping away before SRM is fully complete, Miller admits, isn’t easy. But he expresses confidence in the organization’s direction and leadership.
“The vision doesn’t change,” Miller says. “It’s the same message, just a different person delivering it.”
Innovation That Wasn’t Shiny — it was Difficult, But Critical
Innovation is a word that gets thrown around casually. In agriculture, it often gets reduced to a new product, a new platform, or a new acronym.
But Logan points to a very specific example of Miller’s impact — one that was not glamorous, not universally welcomed, and not easy.
“The digitization of the seed certification application process,” Logan says.
And he doesn’t pretend it was smooth.
“It was met with a lot of opposition,” he says. “For people who had spent a lifetime filling out applications on paper, switching to do it online was a lot to ask.”
That’s what real modernization looks like: it’s inconvenient, sometimes unpopular, and it forces people to let go of routines that feel like muscle memory.
But Logan says Miller stayed with it long enough to make the change stick, and to make it work for growers.
“Within a couple of years he’d made that transition very easy,” Logan says. “I think that was one of the big impacts he had on the association.”
CFIA’s View: Visionary, Challenging, and Essential
From the regulator’s seat, Wendy Jahn, national manager for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) Seed Section, offers a farewell that sounds less like a formal compliment and more like a professional truth.
“We’ve certainly had a lot of interaction with Doug over the years,” she says. “And while we’re really happy for him, we’re really going to miss having Doug to work with.”
Jahn describes Miller as “visionary,” “innovative,” and someone who brings ideas “and those dreams to reality.”
That’s a meaningful statement in the context of SRM, where progress depends on disagreement being productive instead of paralyzing.
Jahn calls Miller “a leading and driving force throughout SRM,” and says CFIA appreciates “the time, the dedication to this process and to the betterment of Canada’s seed industry.”
The Next Era: Leadership Turnover and a Sector Under Pressure
Miller’s departure lands in a year of visible transition for the seed sector. Seeds Canada has a new CEO. CSGA will soon have new leadership. And the broader policy environment is still shifting under everyone’s feet.
Miller, for his part, sees opportunity in the turbulence — from public plant breeding discussions to innovation funding, to global trade pressures that ripple quickly through the Canadian system.
But he’s clear that none of it can be solved in isolation. Collaboration across agriculture will be required to ensure Canadian farmers continue to have access to strong, locally adapted genetics.
“If I’ve helped leave the organization in a better place than I found it, then I’m proud of that,” he adds.
