Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (Aug 16/99) - Now that the newly-elected board of directors for the Iqaluit Chamber of Commerce is up and running, the president said their first order of business is to develop a closer working relationship with the municipality.

"One of the things we've talked about is trying to be more proactive than reactive and see if we can come up with some things that appear to be of interest to the membership and to the community at large," said Cheri Kemp-Kinnear.

She explained that by developing a more co-operative partnership with the town, the chamber and the business community it represents would help everyone be more aware of proposed developments in town planning as they happened instead of finding out about them after the fact. This, in turn, would allow business owners to better plan their own development and growth.

"A benefit to the membership is that we'd know when things were going to change. We'd be more able to plan development and our operating expenses," said Kemp-Kinnear.

Also in an effort to better meet the needs of the community's commercial sector and to make sure that all interests were represented, Kemp-Kinnear said that when the board came up three board members short after attempting to elect the body on a few different occasions, the vacancies were filled with businesspeople from sectors that were not already represented. Once a suitable group of people was identified, the three positions were filled by election and the board was in business.

"We had to make sure we had construction represented, retail represented, arts and crafts, small business in general, Inuit organizations, Inuit businesses."

Along with Kemp-Kinnear, Kemp-Kinnear Tour Planning; the chamber's executive is made up of Mike Hine, Qikiqtaaluk Corp.; Alain Carriere, True North Properties Group; Andy Waywell, Mackay Landau; Monica Ell, Arctic Creations; Adamie Itoracheak, Nunanet World Wide Communications; Rick Lefebrve, First Air; Matthew Spence, Baffin Business Development Corp., Elisapie Sheutiapik, Grind and Brew and Dennis Patterson, Dennis Patterson & Associates.

The board and membership are scheduled to meet next month on Sept. 8.