United voice: Atlantic Gateway rep promoting benefits of regional council

SUMMERSIDE - Strength in numbers is the message behind a thirteen-member group out to make Atlantic Canada a major player in the international marketplace.
The Atlantic Advisory Gateway Council is out to raise awareness on the global stage of the opportunities in Atlantic Canada and to search out new markets and contacts for the region's business community.
David Oxner, executive director the Atlantic Gateway Advisory Council, met with members of the Greater Summerside Chamber of Commerce, this week to outline the council's vision and to seek input from the membership.
"In Atlantic Canada we're a very small region population wise so the provinces need to work together because Gateway is really about international trade both inbound and outbound," Oxner said. "A lot of Island businesses would depend on global markets whether they be in the U.S. Middle East, Asia or Europe or even South America... What gateway does is look at the trade quarters and tries to understand where there's bottlenecks and where there's inefficiencies and tries to make those as competitive as possible. In any business what you're trying to do is make sure you maintain your competitive advantage over your competitors. So that having a smooth inflow and outflow of goods through a readily available system helps grow your economy."
Prince Edward Island has played a limited role in the activities of the council and has benefited from its association with the rest of the region.
"If you look at the components of the Gateway, P.E.I. doesn't play in all the component areas," Oxner said. "They do rely on some of those components for trade. For example there isn't a container terminal in Prince Edward Island but businesses on the Island rely either on the container terminal in Saint John, N.B., or the two in Halifax to move goods in and out of the Island either in terms of exports or... imports. So there is kind of a ripple effect.
"One area that is key to the participation of the entire region is the cruise ship industry.
The cruise industry is one of the components of the Atlantic Gateway and that's a very critical component for both Summerside and Charlottetown in terms of the growth of the cruise industry in Atlantic Canada," he said. "The cruise ships tend to plan an itinerary around multiple provinces. They just don't come to one province. So, there's a lot of interdependency and a lot of working between the provinces especially in the cruise industry."
He said outside the region and even within the country people know very little about what's available in Atlantic Canada in terms of businesses and infrastructure.
"We have an image awareness problem but going out as a larger group it shows strength and it shows diversity and depth. When Atlantic Canada gets to sit in front of people and talk as a region, people start to listen," he said.