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I was fortunate to have participated in an industry tour recently attended by local Indigenous leaders and representatives from some of the region’s largest employers where the goal was to get to know each other and begin to work together to identify and solve our respective employment challenges. On the Tour, and in many other…

Sounds of Sirens Climate scientists have been sounding the alarm for some time. Many of you will have heard of young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and her now famous speech to the World Economic Forum in January in which she urged us all to “… act as if the house was on fire. Because…

I recently collaborated with a group of Chamber members to develop a member recruitment brochure. And while I don’t recommend design by committee as a method for getting things done quickly, it was an illuminating and rewarding experience. One of the components of the collateral we created, was to list the member benefits we offer…

As one might expect, a significant amount of my time is spent explaining what a chamber of commerce is and how potential and even current members can derive maximum benefit from their membership. The members who are most positive about their chamber experience are the ones with whom we have co-created a transformational, rather than…

There is a term for the situation when employees can’t or don’t live where the jobs are located: economists call it “spatial mismatch”. In some cities this condition is very pronounced. Think San Francisco. Boston. New York City. And to a lesser degree, Vancouver, Victoria, and the Saanich Peninsula. When housing costs are prohibitive, workers,…

I attended a workforce forum last week, which was focussed on the the difficult challenges employers face in finding employees to fill current positions. Employers are having to spend an increasing amount of time on recruitment and retention efforts, and are finding it necessary to expand their focus to access groups of people they have…

Media Contact: Denny Warner (250) 656-3616 execdir@peninsulachamber.ca peninsulachamber.ca PENINSULA INDUSTRIAL FORCES UNITE SIDNEY, FEBRUARY 1, 2019 — The Sidney North Saanich Industrial Group (SNSIG) is pleased to announce that they are consolidating their Peninsula-based Industry and Manufacturing Sector advocacy efforts with the Saanich Peninsula Chamber of Commerce. Recognizing similar focus and goals, and the importance…

We have organized tours of businesses on the Saanich Peninsula now for 9 years for our Tour of Industry. To date, we have visited approximately 36 of them and the Tour remains one of the most popular activities we undertake, for several reasons. The first reason is that many of the businesses we have been…