| It’s been a busy fall with lots of exciting project milestones, new and expanded collaborations, and dialogue with our members. As an organization, part of our work has also been around preparing for our renewed mandate and all the opportunity that comes with it. Today, we have more than 520 members from coast-to-coast-to-coast with hundreds of collaborations taking place across our portfolio of 86 approved technology leadership and innovation ecosystem projects, now valued at more than $390 million. There is momentum building in ocean in Canada, and more than ever before the world is watching with keen interest. That’s a message we hear often and something that collectively as an ocean community, should be a moment of pride.
On Friday, we publicly rolled out Ambition 2035 – to grow Canada’s ocean economy to $220 billion (5x growth) by 2035. This is a big ambition that has been informed by more than 400 people in industry, research, economics, not for profits, government and others across our membership. If you attended one of our fall engagement sessions, you would have seen an early discussion document built around this idea. In launching it we hope that you will rally around what this ambition means for you and engage with us and others to realize the potential of what Canada can be as an ocean nation.
As we reach the end of the first five years of our mandate and the end of 2022, I am so thankful for all the hard work of the OSC team to help us get to a place where we can set a bold ambition for the ocean economy for Canada. There has been a lot of success, a lot of hard work and a lot of learning to get us to this place. As we transition into the next phase of our journey, we are making organizational changes to the executive level with three new, expanded positions including Chief Growth and Investment Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Engagement and Communications Officer, where there will be a recruitment process welcoming candidates from both within and external to the organization to apply. We are currently working through the organizational impacts of these changes, with more information coming.
Melody Pardoe, our Chief Engagement Officer will be leaving the organization on December 23rd, 2022. Melody has been involved in building the OSC from the beginning – building and delivering our ecosystem strategy. Personally, I would like to thank her for all that she has done to get the OSC to where it is today and her commitment to building a strong ocean ecosystem from coast-to-coast-to-coast. Melody will be pursuing new, exciting opportunities, and I know she will remain a champion of the OSC.
As the first five years of the cluster draw near, we look ahead with big ambition.
We look forward to continuing to build on what we’ve started, together. |
