A Letter to our Members

Dear Members,

I hope you are well; each of you, your family and your employees. It has been a challenging thirteen weeks. And in different ways for each of us. One thing that is clear is that we are all in the same storm but in different boats. As the Board of Trade serves the entire business community, we have been keeping our attention on the overall impact to our community while prioritizing our advocacy work on those most at risk. The next thing that has become clear is that we are all completely connected, every sector and size of business. And the success of every business is reliant on the health and well being of our community at large. This we shall not forget again.

Stronger together. Collectively, we have learned many lessons in a short time and designed solutions with a new level of commitment, creativity, and collaboration. This will position our community for a successful recovery. We are thrilled to be entering stage two of the Ontario Reopening Plan. Ottawa as done a good job of flattening the curve and I want to thank each of you for your continued support of the Board of Trade during this time.

If you were able, many of you maintained your membership which is our primary source of funding. Some of you even stepped up with sponsorship dollars so we could ramp up our advocacy and run relevant programs. And so many of you dedicated countless hours volunteering your expertise to our advocacy so that we could interact with all levels of government in a confident and effective way. Thank you!

From the beginning of COVID we have been focused on identifying the most pressing issues for business and working with stakeholders to tweak the programs as they were released but we have also been building the foundation for recovery. We were pleased to see the regional approach to reopening and are advocating for ways our community can thrive in this new economy.

We have been planning for the reopening for some time and wish to thank our City of Ottawa Economic Partners, our Chamber colleagues at the Ontario and Canadian Chamber as well as our fellow members at the Canadian Global Cities Coalition for their leadership. You may well know the Canadian Chamber President and CEO has been leading our network and working closely with the Canadian government from day one. They are also responsible for the key resource; Canadian Business Resilience Network. I am not sure I have ever witnessed such an incredible display of the power of our Chamber and Boards of Trade network.

We wish you all a safe and successful reopening of business. We are launching several programs to support you under the header, Ottawa Reopening, starting with Business Reopening Workshops and Business Peer Groups with more to come early next week.

I wish to take this opportunity to thank our staff team for their incredible dedication. Like many of you, this time has required of us a high level of adaptability, initiative, and patience. I am grateful for their unwavering support of your success. Our team continues to work from home and remain completely accessible to you by phone and email. As always, my door is open.

Yours in prosperity, Sueling

Sueling Ching | President & CEO | Ottawa Board of Trade
c: 613-349-5757 | e: sueling.ching@ottawabot.ca