Marketing

Greg Vurdela - Vice President -Marketing, Customer and Government Relations

Marketing is one of BCMEA’s newest departments. The department’s work is focused on two key relationships: BCMEA’s relationship with federal and provincial governments, and our relationship with our customer-members.

One of our key goals is to stay in tune with our customer-members and to ensure that BCMEA’s priorities are the priorities of its customer-members. An imperative is that we understand how our customer-member’s businesses run, what they need from us, and where they are going in the future.

Over the last few years we have worked hard to ensure that we understand the nuances of their business, and this new level of communication has resulted in some unexpected outcomes, including the 2011 contract settlement with the ILWU. Staying aligned with its customer-member needs made this unprecedented eight-year agreement possible.

In terms of the future, BCMEA will continue to expand our relationships with other stakeholders in the Asia-Pacific gateway, so see he we can plot a course for the Association that is aligned with the objective and commercial goals of our customer-members.

Our goal is to ensure that governments understand the role our member-customers play in the economy, and how regulations can affect their ability to do business.

In Canada, the Asia-Pacific gateway contributes 12-billion dollars to the Gross Domestic Product, is responsible for 130,000 direct and indirect jobs, and here in BC, directly employs 47-thousand people. With continue investment by governments in infrastructure, we believe the gateway could grow by another 30 to 40 percent. That translates into tens of thousands of well-paying jobs in BC and across Canada. Ensuring that the country benefits from this phenomenal economic engine is one of BCMEA’s key goals.