Report on the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Latvia Annual General Meeting
03.10.2017

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The CanCham experienced an extremely positive AGM on Monday, October 2^nd, 2017 at the Riga Business School. 33 members were present representing a total vote count of 66.

Ed Kalvins was re-elected as President/Chairman. Nine candidates vied for four Board positions, with

Inta Cinite, Indra Sproģe-Kalviņa, Henrik Mjöman and Dr. Kintija Barloti being elected to the Board. Sam Davidovich remains as CanCham Director in Canada. The Audit Committee with Arvids Godjuks, Dzintra Renigere and Jan Welitz continues it’s three year mandate.

The CanCham remains committed to its objective of serving the business interests of all its members, but discussion centred around defining exactly what these interests are. Dr. Karl Sarkans undertook to chair a work group to review “pricing and performance” and issues related to the sustainability of the chamber. Clearly financing is an issue, but our commitment to the development of small and medium businesses demands unique solutions to achieving lasting results, after all, to be sensitive to the requirements of both larger and smaller partners is the Canadian way.

The stage is now set for year three of a three year re-development program for the CanCham. This includes the following:

• upcoming events (see events http://cancham.lv/events):
  • October 9^th, the Canadian Thanksgiving dinner with guest speaker, Col Josh Major, MSM, CD, Commander, Task Force Latvia, Canadian Armed Forces,
  • December 8^th, the CanCham Christmas in support of Nāc Līdzas.
• special expert seminars where the CanCham will be inviting specialists to provide their insight into particular operational and administrative functions,
• the development of functional groups (Business Support Services, Medical Tourism, Constriction Related Services, Export, etc,) in both Canada and Latvia where teams in each country will support each other in achieving CanCham objectives, building on the recent “connecting Canada-Latvia” event in Toronto, 
• focus group meetings which will promote each of the previously mentioned groups through presentations by group members.

We remind everyone of CanCham’s Short term objective - The CanCham intends to optimize the expected benefits from the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Canada/European Union free trade agreement that will remove most tariffs and bureaucracy between the EU and Canada and will greatly impact small and medium sized business. See http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ceta/. This will provide major export opportunities for EU and Canadian companies, particularly for small and medium sized businesses. The agreement has been approved by both EU and Canadian parliaments and is currently going through the ratification process before becoming fully implemented.

We thank all members for their participation. Onwards and upwards!

Please follow http://cancham.lv/news for updates.

For pictures, see www.facebook.com/canchamlatvia