Kamloops looks to leap Great Wall

By MARKUS ERMISCH
Staff reporter

Sep 07 2007

City’s economic development arm spending almost $10G annually on trade facilitator

Venture Kamloops is spending just under $10,000 per year to help local businesses breach the Great Wall of China.

Jeff Putnam, head of the city’s business development agency, said Venture Kamloops has contracted a trade facilitator to help local companies do business in China.

Connie Chan, who has offices in Vancouver and the Chinese capital of Beijing, will offer “basic trade and investment services,” such as arranging meetings, gathering market data, organizing transportation and translations.

Putnam concedes that Canadian consulates, located in major Chinese cities, already provide similar services to companies wishing to operate in China.

Consulates, however, lack flexibility because they represent the entire country, not just an individual city, Putnam said.

He noted Chan is already familiar with the Tournament Capital because of her work with Thompson Rivers University and, previously, the University College of the Cariboo, having acted as a sales agent for both institutions in China.

Next month, a Kamloops trade delegation heads east for meetings in Changping, a city with which Kamloops has a friendship agreement, and Shanghai.

The expedition, billed as a business trip, includes representatives from city hall — including Mayor Terry Lake and three councillors — Tourism Kamloops, Thompson Rivers University, School District 73 and the Kamloops Indian Band.

For the elected officials, the trip east is split in two.

Lake, together with councillors Joe Leong, John O’Fee and Pat Wallace, will spend the first few days in Uji, Kamloops’ sister city in Japan. Under the sister-city agreement, reciprocal visits by elected officials are required every second year.

From Japan, the politicians will fly to Beijing, where they will meet with the actual trade delegation.

“For the Chinese, it’s very important to have government-to-government contact. They are very much controlled by a government bureaucracy, and so private business tends to operate at the direction of government,” Lake said as he explained why he is continuing on to China.

Is it necessary for three councillors to go along?

“Do they need to go? Probably no. To have them there will be an additional bonus,” Lake said, noting that should his presence be required at one function, a councillor could represent Kamloops at another event.

“To have those councillors there will help the trade mission because it will allow us to do more in a shorter period of time.”

Eventually, Lake said, the role of mayor and council in such trips to China will be scaled back, perhaps after the October visit.

“We still feel it’s in the formative stage,” he said of the friendship agreement Kamloops inked with Changping in July 2005.

An additional educational protocol, Lake said, will be s