Toronto – its business is business
25th July 2010 by Andrew Needs, Ottawa | No Comments
I spent the day in Toronto last Tuesday. A 7 am flight down means you can comfortably make a 9am meeting and get a full day in and the 7 or 8 pm return flight home. Not dissimilar to a Wellington-Auckland-Wellington business day. The reasons for making that trip are pretty similar as well. While both Ottawa and Wellington do have business and manufacturing, you can’t get away from the overarching reality that they are our respective nation’s capitals and therefore have a big political and public service dimension. Auckland and Toronto are commercial centres. While New Zealand does not have resident representation in Toronto, it is important to stay connected with business, provincial government, think tanks and lobby groups. All six meetings on Tuesday were valuable in various ways. My session with CRFA ( Canadian Restaurant and Food Services Association) was a stand out and covered a lot of ground in an hour, both with regard to shared policy interests, but also the more immediate and sharp end of our interests: New Zealand selling increasing amounts of high quality food and beverage products into Canada and the CRFA’s commitment to its 33,000 business members and ultimately to the consumer, to offer high quality products in their various establishments. CRFA CEO and President, Garth White, rightly reminded me that restaurants are the early measures or the consumer’s “try before you buy opportunity” for products before they potentially find themselves onto supermarket shelves. That meeting alone drove home the importance of connections into Canada’s largest city, where business is business.
