Tonight I had the honor of attending the Canadian Business Association of North Carolina (CBANC or CBA-NC) Social. I was invited by Carol Stymiest, the President of CBANC, who attended the last Sister Cities of Cary 5th Thursday Social - I remember my arm was twisted (very slightly) as Carol mentioned that I needed to attend her meeting...
What a great group of Canadian ExPats and Business leaders. There was an amazing mix of culture in this group; one was Canadian/Portuguese, one was Canadian/Czech, some were born in the US and spent lots of time in Canada, some were naturalized US and some did not want to become naturalized... Lots of interesting individual and family stories.
Ben Gailor, Consul and Senior Trade Commissioner from the Canadian Consulate in Raleigh, gave a report of the change in the Canadian Foreign Affairs strategy. The Consulate in Raleigh will close on July 31 for budget reasons. That the smaller Consulates are being closed to save $ was not unexpected, but what was a surprise was that the Buffalo, NY Consulate is also being closed (employs 57 or 75 people but I can't remember which - a big number none the less). Headcount is also being reassigned to Asia. Ben wanted people to follow him on Twitter so that he could "build the brand" (@bengailor) I had previously met Ben at a Cary Business Expo, and will be sad to see him go.
The purpose of the meeting was to generate ideas for future CBANC programs that would be able to give the membership helpful information about issues that Canadian Businesses experience in cross-border trade and in doing business in the US and Internationally. The meeting broke into 3 brainstorming groups to develop ideas. I participated in 1 of these, but had to leave prior to the recap of all of the ideas. Judging by the group I was in, the ideas are bountiful, but the planning and implementation will take time and effort!
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