Strategy
associations within life sciences. To
attract them we worked with Global
Affairs Canada and our counterpart
from the Economic, Development,
Trade and Investment Agency to work
with Canadian embassies worldwide
and the corporations they deal with to
identify which ones could hold meetings
and events in Canada (priority No. 1)
and (priority No. 2) who could also
potentially be mature for trade and
investment. All 15 clients that came
were really open to both propositions.
Each city at Innovate Canada was
represented by both the convention
bureau and a life science expert in trade
and investment. It was more of an equal
opportunity on both sides. agriculture and fisheries to marine
biodiversity, to ocean technology, to
shipyards, shipbuilding, offshore oil and
gas, marine transportation, etc.
Anything oceans-related within natural
resources. All our partners will be
coastal cities with a centre of excellence
within this industry.
Saskatoon was at the recent Innovate
Canada event on life sciences. When you
talk about vaccines, Saskatoon has a
place at the table. Compared to the very
large cities, Saskatoon doesn’t feel like a
smaller city, it feels like an equal partner
when talking within that sphere.
CMW: Canada seems to be leading the way
in defining its vertical markets and
promoting them for conferencing. VdV: Oh, yes. For example, the Protein
Summit. Bridge2Food is an
organisation from the Netherlands and
they are very interested in Protein
superclusters. They’re organising two
events this year – in June and July this
year and they’re in Calgary and
Saskatoon. The supercluster initiative is
more than just investing money; it is
about doing business differently - about
leveraging strengths to drive
innovation, overcome barriers and
explore new opportunities. By creating
more value-added processing
opportunities in Canada, the idea is to
generate new companies, products,
processes, services, and jobs.
IS: Are organisers now looking at more
than just the venue and the destination?
CSN: Other countries do have similar
strategies. Look at the size of Canada, in
one year Virginie has connected with 23
key Canadian cities that has a strength
in those seven sectors. When looking at
Canada, international organisers only
really knew about Toronto, Montreal
and Vancouver - three cities. Now 20
other cities fit in our seven sectors – all
of them are raising the bar, embracing
the strategy and asking how they can
jump on board and how can they
participate. We haven’t had one city that
has not wanted to get involved or say
they can’t.
We continue to build on Innovate
Canada, which is now our signature
event, and next year it’s going to be in
St John’s, Newfoundland and focusing
on natural resources. This will be in the
first week of September 2020. It will be
at the same time as the World
AquaCulture Conference. We always
align Innovate Canada with a major
event relevant to the sector we’re
promoting.
IS: What about the city’s infrastructure
outlook for the future?
CSN: Canada, over the last 5-8 years,
has invested a lot into its infrastructure.
We’re not worried about any of the 23
cities. We’re not worried about any
infrastructure gaps from convention
centres to hotels to venue to arts and
culture museums. All our destinations
are well equipped and have state of the
art venue facilities. Halifax has a new
convention centre, Winnipeg’s doubled
in size, and Calgary is doubling its size
over the next couple of years, etc.
VdV: But, in a broad sense, so when we
talk natural resources, we’re talking
24 /
CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD
IS: And what about air lift?
/
ISSUE 102
Below:
Halifax, Nova
Scotia, at night
CSN: There are still issues or gaps with
bringing more carriers into Canada, but
that’s a government issue. There is
fairly strict regulation. We do have
more flights and seats, more times a
day. Halifax has increased its airlift
considerably.
London maybe does not realise how
close it is to the east coast of Canada. It’s
only a five-hour flight - direct.
We want to continue investing in our
strategy and this includes staff. We have
representatives worldwide, from
London to five representatives in the
US (New York, Texas, Washington, San
Francisco, Chicago and Washington)
and we’re opening an office next year in
China, India and Mexico.
Each office will have representatives
that will be proactive in selling
corporate meetings and incentive travel.
We’ll also have specialists in our
sectors. They will then target business
and events related to the sectors with a
view to bringing them to Canada,
matching them with a specific
destination.