Report on “Greens Night”
21.03.2017

---

The “Greens Night” took place on Monday, March 20^th, 2017 at the Radisson Blu Daugava Hotel, 24 Kugu Street, www.radissonblu.com/en/hotel-riga.

Ed Kalvins began the evening by welcoming new CanCham members - Gosselin Mobility Baltics, Indian Raja Restaurant, Continett (Aviopasaule), and Dr Barloti and noted that Latvia was the first country to ratify the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union on February 23^rd, 2017. The CanCham has also been preparing for both CETA and the NATO deployment and intends to arrange welcoming events, guided tours for our guests, and a special introduction to the Brālis Brewery.

Raimonds Bergmanis provided an interesting overview of the NATO deployment of Canadian and other multi-national troops and what it means for Latvia. Besides infrastructure development, this initiative enhances the effectivity of Latvia’s own armed forces by upgrading and modernizing its capability. We certainly recognize the contribution of this initiative to helping to promote stability in this region. 

Edgars Tavars, Chairman of the Green Party, discussed the Green party’s priorities in the Saeima, these being the support of small and medium businesses and environmental issues, and some of the challenges faced in the healthcare system. He did, however, caution that the current coalition government system does not allow for speedy actions, and is in fact, quite cumbersome when it comes to achieving reforms.  

Gundars Bojars, a former mayor of Riga and candidate in the upcoming municipal elections in Ādaži, gave a very concise presentation on black currants. His company, Vestafume TLG, is involved in black currant biological farming and the production of fresh and frozen berries with the assistance of a Canadian investor – and expanding rapidly. This is seen to have significant export potential because of the variety of uses for black currents which were discussed in the presentation.

We thank our guest speakers for their informative and interesting presentations.

Presentations can be found at http://cancham.lv/cancham-members/presentations.

Please follow http://cancham.lv/news and www.facebook.com/canchamlatvia/ for updates.