Jon Garson wants to change the way businesses across the province see the British Columbia Chamber of Commerce.
Although Garson has been president and CEO of the organization for less than a week, he has big plans for the chamber in terms of raising its profile and ultimately boosting membership.
“We bill ourselves as having over 30,000 businesses as members – and we do – but there are 400,000 business licences in B.C., so we have less than 10% of the market,” he told Business in Vancouver
“What we have to do is go out there and tell our story and say why we are an important part of what businesses should be thinking about, how they operate both at the local level and how they can improve the economy and the business climate at the provincial and federal levels as well.”
Garson said businesses are increasingly asking the question, “As a member, what do I get for that membership fee?”
One of the ways both Garson and the BC Chamber’s board plans to make the chamber more attractive to new members is to turn it into more of a “full-service” organization.
“The BC Chamber is going to have to become far more active in terms of developing a whole range of new products and services that we can provide local chambers that will provide value to their members at the community level,” he said.
One area the chamber could be helping B.C. businesses, he said, is in the development of international opportunities.
“We have just signed the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership], which still has to be ratified, and we have CETA [Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union],” he said. “We have all of these new opportunities on the international business front.
“But if you’re a local business in Prince George who says, ‘I want to start exporting my product, I have a fantastic new widget that will go gangbusters if we can get it on an international market,’ where do they go to actually access those international markets?
“That’s something the Chamber of Commerce should be doing and we don’t do that right now.”
Another area the chamber sees an opportunity to grow is in youth membership.
“We should be more actively recruiting young entrepreneurs that are coming through.”
Another one of Garson’s goals will be to increase coordination, interprovincially and nationally.
“We have counterparts in every province and we have a very strong organization in the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, but the issues impacting businesses in British Columbia are not just provincial; they are federal as well,” he said.
“One of the things that is really poorly understood and is going to be a key factor in terms of how we raise the profile of the organization is that we are the only organization that can effectively advocate for business at every level, through the local community chambers at a local and regional level, through ourselves at the BC Chamber at the provincial level and then through the Canadian Chamber at the federal level.
“No other business organization has the ability to do that, frankly.”
Garson has worked with the BC Chamber for 11 years, in the positions of director, policy development and communication, and vice-president, policy development and government relations.
Prior to joining the chamber, he worked as a civil servant in the United Kingdom, “in a number of different policy roles, for a number of different government ministries.”
BC Chamber board chair Brant Hasanen said one of the reasons Garson was selected as the organization’s president and CEO was his vision for growing membership in the province’s chamber network.
“Jon has dedicated over a decade of his career to the Chamber of Commerce movement,” Hasanen said. “Jon has been at the forefront of placing the BC Chamber of Commerce as the foremost business advocacy organization in the province.”
Former president and CEO John Winter retired at the end of June. He had been with the chamber since 1997.
