The Mayor will not be giving his usual state of the city address at the Kamloops & District Chamber of Commerce dinner gala.

Last year, Reid Hamer-Jackson was found in breach of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, a well as the Council Code of Conduct, connected to pictures he had planned to use in his presentation. Those photographs never did make it into the presentation he delivered that night.

Chamber Executive Director Acacia Pangalinan says despite those issues a year ago, that is not why a change in the speakers list was decided upon. She says with the threat of US tariffs it just made sense to shift focus to the economic development side of things. “We really wanted to provide an opportunity for our partners in economic development to share about what they’re working on and what they expect to happen in the year ahead.”

The gala, which is set for March 13, will feature Venture Kamloops and Sc.wenwen Economic Development Corporation, TteS’ business and economic development arm. “Really giving those high level presentations about our local economy,’ said Pangalinan. “We did shift from kind of two presentations from our local elected officials with the Mayor and Kukpi7 to have a bit more of a focus on kind of needing a team Kamloops approach to our major issues.”

She went on to say that it also wanted to give an opportunity for our MP, Frank Caputo, and our MLAs to join the stage. “Answer questions that our business community has. I think, as a chamber, we look at our events and we’re always trying to evolve them and grow them, but we also recognize that a lot of our issues need the different levels of government to focus on them and to come together. That’s what really prompted the change, was wanting to have our other levels of elected officials present at the event.”

Pangalinan says there will be a lot of opportunity to have questions asked and answers from our federal and provincial politicians and she is looking forward to this re-imagined event.

“I know we are always looking at how we can change what we do… It’s similar members from the business community coming out, and we want to make sure that when they come to events, they’re very valuable, they receive lots of good information. And I think just with the provincial election that happened, we felt like it was a good opportunity to try to bring in the different levels of government at this event.”