Testimonials

“Through my project related travel to Latin America and Africa, I have learned that Canada is well known for the very high quality of life that she provides to its people. By achieving this very enviable position in the world, we demonstrate that Canadians have the appropriate integration of institutions, technology and ability to manage our resources. The urban setting of a medium world class city, with its challenges associated with infrastructure, institutional capacity and environment provides an excellent stage for us to showcase this capability.”

Rui de Carvalho, President R.J. Burnside International

• SCI focuses on sustainable economic development rather than on the more traditional sale of environmental goods and services. Sustainable development is recognized around the world as a very important tool for economic growth and improvement of quality of life. Presenting Canadian products and services in that context immediately makes them more attractive to senior decision makers and political leaders in countries such as Brazil.
  
  
• in the past Canadian environmental technology marketing has lacked an overall strategy. The result has been that our very worthwhile initiatives in developing countries have low visibility compared to the inevitably much larger initiatives of our major competitors, particularly western European countries and the USA. By focussing some of our initiatives in a coordinated way on a very small number of cities, the SCI is going to show the world in a much more effective way what great things can be achieved in the context of sustainable development with Canadian knowledge and products.
  
  
• in the international arena one of the greatest weaknesses of the Canadian environmental technology sector has been the lack of marketing and implementation coordination between the different companies. While companies from other countries often deliver a single proposal offering the best of their country's expertise, Canadian companies often compete with each other for the same work. This kind of competition is not well understood in many countries where they are seeking the best of what we have to offer. As a result, Canada does not win as many international contracts as we would win if we were to present a single "best of Canada" proposal. The networking and coordination that is part of the SCI initiative in Brazil is already leading to cooperation between Canadian companies and hence to better quality proposals that will be more attractive to our partners in Salvador than proposals from individual companies would have been.

• Climate Change and CDM
  
• Water Infrastructure
  
• Health and Environment
  
• Urban Air Quality

• Cities generally contain the largest sources of pollutant emissions in our planet, while at the same time containing the largest concentrations of people exposed to those environmental stresses.
  
• The trend towards increasing percentage of urban vs rural population ,and also a "per capita" analysis of environmental effects on human health, justifies focusing on the urban environment as the "surrogate" of global environmental issues.
  
• There is a greater breadth and depth of experience in a city context than in regional or national scale approaches to global environmental issues. This experience includes aspects of the interaction necessary between public and private sector and the synergies derived therefrom, for equitable resolution of the issues.