An episode with Michael Sadavoy, the Director of Growth and Committee Services at the Greater Saint John Chamber of Commerce, gives a picture of some of the important things that will be happening in the city in 2024 and looking at some of the challenges that the city faces.
To find out more about The Chamber and how to benefit from there services, check out their website
[00:00:00] Welcome to NB Traveler, that podcast that talks about New Brunswick stuff. Today, I'm drinking a
[00:00:12] cup of coffee from Java Moose, their foghorn blend, and it was provided for me by Eugene that went to
[00:00:20] my website, NBTraveler.com, and bought me three cups of coffee. Today, we's going to be happening now in 2024. Yeah, it's, it certainly had its challenges and we're still seeing what those challenges are. It's not something that's a quick turnaround after a year or two. Sometimes these things have long-term effects. I can go three or four of even longer amount of years.
[00:01:40] One of the things that we love about where we live is we're seeing our,
[00:01:45] our business community really help out each other, but also help out
[00:02:44] in 2024 and what makes it so special here? I saw that too.
[00:02:45] That was a really kind of a cool thing.
[00:02:47] One of the things for us that we really cherish
[00:02:50] is our history.
[00:02:52] And we have, being the first incorporated city in Canada,
[00:02:56] certainly we have that history where people can come
[00:02:59] and take a look at some of the older style buildings,
[00:03:03] a little bit of the new with the old.
[00:03:05] I mean, when you talk based on some of the challenges they may be facing. So if they are facing some issues and they are members of the chamber, we can advocate on their behalf, whether that's creating a task force or taking issues up to our board and taking that to the municipal, okay, where are you right now? And where can we partner up or where can we bring you to help you with your, to guide? I mean, maybe it's partnering with another person in the membership base. There's a lot of different things that we do. I think that some of the new businesses that you have that you've been supporting and working with are immigrants
[00:05:40] that are coming from other countries that are beginning
[00:05:43] to settle in St. John.
[00:05:44] How's that going?
[00:05:46] Really well, it's a people in a basement. Like this is how much we've grown and we're continuing to grow because we're able to, and this is great about Canadian culture, we're able to take other people's cultures and celebrate that instead of saying, no, you have to learn what we're up to, you know, it's that cultural mosaic mentality, which I absolutely love. And I think that what we're doing is we're also very welcoming to these
[00:07:04] new opportunities and working with some of these new businesses and these
[00:08:03] So that's becoming a challenge. I know that it's something that's definitely
[00:08:05] on the minds of a lot of people.
[00:08:07] The healthcare is another challenge,
[00:08:09] finding doctors, keeping doctors here.
[00:08:12] We're doing a health symposium to address this in April.
[00:08:17] We have the Minister of Health coming in
[00:08:19] and we're also bringing in some of the students
[00:08:23] and future doctors so they can meet
[00:08:25] part of the business community.
[00:08:26] So that's the other thing too,
[00:08:27] to making sure that they feel integrated very interested in because we can do all this, all these great things. But if you don't have affordable housing, or if we don't have, if we don't have the infrastructure to then we're kind of shooting ourselves in the foot. And I always liked to end my interviews with the people who live here in New Brunswick with the simple question, Mike, what do you like about
[00:09:43] living in New Brunswick?
[00:09:45] It's a great question.
[00:09:46] I love the question. because we're part of that anonymous mob, or people just want to get from place to place. And in a place like St. John or in other areas of New Brunswick, the pacing is a little bit slower and you really get to make really meaningful and authentic connections. And I've been so fortunate to have that opportunity and I'm grateful for that. And that's why living here has been so