By Plain Rhetoric

New Chamber prez demonstrates a Knaak for moving the organization forward

Apr 3, 2018 | 5:00 AM

KAMLOOPS — I recently met up with Joshua Knaak, the new president of the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce and for those who follow this column on a regular basis, you know that Mr. Knaak and I have in the past, occasionally bumped heads.  

At times we’ve disagreed not so much on the need for Kamloops to continue growing business and employment opportunities but on the method and maybe even occasionally, on the type of businesses that fit with the Kamloops of the future.Even when we disagree though, I’ve found Mr. Knaak’s arguments to be thoughtful and above all else, in what he feels are in the best interests of our City.  And while, during these debates, he is always wrong and I always right, I can see a future where one day, he will be right too…at least once. 

But seriously, the new President of the Chamber recognizes there are many unrealized opportunities for Kamloops.  Mr. Knaak also feels the first step in capitalizing on these opportunities is to up the game on the Chamber’s communication strategies.  The Chamber is not always that well understood outside of its immediate membership and he feels and I agree this has to change. For some, the Chamber is viewed as an insider’s club for local and well-established business owners with close ties to political parties who are right of centre.

Perhaps the political leaning has some truth to it as after all it is a business group and I could point to other organizations that as a result of their focus, show a tendency to lean to the left, so fair’s fair.  However, in this case, Mr. Knaak was able to demonstrate that membership is not the sole preserve of the card-carrying, BC Liberal backing, business person.  In fact, membership is quite a mix and according to Mr. Knaak, includes, along with your expected business people, 120 members representing local non-profits. Certainly a mixture of opinions, ideas, and politics that many other organizations might want to emulate.However, their focus is business and on that front, our conversation covered a number of areas including the expected and needed discussion about whether or not our City’s future is that of a resource town.

Examples of this business direction dilemma were easy to find and included the long and agonizing debate over Ajax as well as the role the tech sector will play in the years to come.  Mr. Knaak pointed to Ajax and the significant contributions it made in support of a number of social agencies such as the United Way and others.  He mentioned how those funds were significant and with Ajax gone, they’ll be hard to replace. I suggested that kind of reliance was an indicator of the need to refocus and grow the number of small businesses that in combination could contribute an equal or greater amount of time and financial support to the community.  Spread over say 20 new companies and 300 or 400 new employees, the financial exposure is lessened to the extent that the loss of one company would not have the same negative financial and volunteer impact as the loss of one very large company such as Ajax.

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We also talked about the technology industry and agreed that every village, town, city, regional district, province and country sees or hopes that this sector will be their salvation.  We agreed that in most cases, it won’t and it would be dangerous to put all of one’s economic hopes in that one basket. We are competing against cities which in some cases have a metro population that is equal to or greater than the population of all of Canada (Tokyo 38 million people).  So thoughts of world domination in the tech sector need to be tempered with the reality of who we are up against, the resources they have at hand and the market share they currently control.

However, that is not to say the tech sector shouldn’t be part of Kamloops’ future but maybe not in the way originally envisioned.  Perhaps a tech sector that includes a major manufacturing component, employing a variety of skills not all of which are software design.  Green energy may be one of those avenues to explore and a market segment where we could find a specialized niche to work in that combines tech know-how with manufacturing capacity

Our conversation went on for nearly two hours and several cups of coffee at the Red Beard.  I came away from our chat with a better understanding of the Chamber and a feeling this Joshua Knaak guy seems to have the drive, skills, and vision to make things happen.