2016 is slipping by quickly. If you can believe it, we are already into May. Thank you to all who made the CAMSC Procurement Fair a success. For those many corporate members and suppliers who attended and or participated, we hope you made some great contacts.
While there are many things happening, I wanted to bring to your attention a couple of key events:
In early May, the City of Toronto passed their Social Procurement Framework. Congratulations to the City on this important milestone. This Framework addresses the inclusion of Social Enterprises, Employment of Diverse employees and most importantly from CAMSC’s perspective a focus on Supplier Diversity (e.g. the inclusion of diverse suppliers in their procurement process). The City of Toronto is the first municipality in Canada to have a Supplier Diversity policy. We hope this will lay the foundation for other municipalities across Canada.
If you have your calendar close by, please note that CAMSC has a number of outreach events going on in June, Windsor on the 7th, Halifax on the 9th and Winnipeg on the 29th. We have lined up some great corporate participation and we hope to see a number of our suppliers taking advantage of these networking opportunities.
Last but not least, as you are planning for the fall, CAMSC will be hosting an Inclusive Procurement Summit on September 30th, following our Awards Gala on the 29th. The Summit will be a full day presenting a series of best practice supplier diversity case studies featuring key organizations, educational round tables and an expert panel discussion. It will be a great day for learning and sharing. Please mark your calendar!
Cassandra Dorrington
President and CEO