After long awaiting Ontario Chambers more than Business

Toronto Nov. 1-2 , 2023 – Two Day meeting in person

By Marek J. D. Goldyn – The Canadian National News / The EUROPEAN Club Of Canada

2023 Ontario Economic Summit

By Irina Bilots – Reporter The Canadian National News / The EUROPEAN Club of Canada

After a long preparation on November 1-2 the members of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) have gathered at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre to celebrate Chamber’s 20th anniversary. Under the theme of “Partnerships for Prosperity”, this annual event was opened by welcome remarks from Her Worship Olivia Chow, Mayor of the City of Toronto. The Mayor greeted the audience and shared some results of her first 100 days in the office.

  Later took on stage the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau who addressed Chamber’s members highlighting importance of solving economic issues of the Province, such as affordable housing but also highlighting accomplishments of the past decade. For example, Prime Minister shared statistics about improvements in the area of poverty reduction estimating that since 2015, 2.3 mln. people have been elevated from extreme poverty, 600,000 of which are children.

The opening day continued with the keynote address from the Honorable Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario. He highlighted importance of the provincial government being there for the companies when those need support. Premier also shared that Ontario is the most competitive place to do business in Canada and it needs to remain this way. In order to do so, Ontario needs to address various business concerns, one of which is finding and maintaining talent. In the meantime, he confirmed provincial government is committed to building hospitals, highways, create jobs and reduce taxes to allow businesses to reinvest back into their operations.

An important announcement was made on the first day of the event about the appointment of Daniel Tisch as OCC’s new President and Chief Executive Officer effective January 2024.

Throughout the two days of the event, Ontario businessmen have dived-deep into the discussions on how to address Canada’s housing supply gap; partnering with indigenous people for major infrastructure projects in Ontario; how to use AI responsibly for economic growth; fostering collaboration between government, construction companies, and skilled trades to attract missing skills into Canada; and how to empower Ontario by overcoming red tape, harnessing diversity, and igniting innovative growth.

This year’s Ontario Economic Summit was a success! Apart from rich programme, it provided excellent opportunity for all members to network, build connections for future collaboration and share their views with each other on the issues of importance for Ontario.