Featured Speakers

  Opening Keynote Speaker:  Marnie McBean

Marnie McBean looks back at the nine Olympic Games she’s been involved in, and the lessons and impact that they’ve left her with, perhaps one of the top being that, “you can’t finish happy if you don’t try to start happy.” In this talk, Marnie describes the four key elements to starting happy, using relevant and interesting examples to elucidate her points and give audience key and immediately implementable takeaways to start on the path to personal success: 1. Be aware of your “done” list 2. Don’t wait to start hard conversations. 3. Use the expectation of change and challenge as a weapon. 4. Know that you are the somebody that you’ve been waiting for.

  Thursday Lunch Speaker:  Lorraine Behnan

Ignite Your Evolution (Excelling Through Change)
It is no longer enough to merely survive change; it is necessary to grow and evolve. Despite the rapidity and discontinuity of rapid transitions you can take control of achieving professional excellence by practicing personal mastery: adjust attitudes and behaviors, exceed limits, choose wisely, act on opportunities, keep current on business practices and knowledge. Lorraine Behnan brings to her audiences over twenty years of professional speaking experience, and knowledge of communication and personal change management. Her passion for her subject matter is highly contagious. Lorraine consistently demonstrates her ability to motivate people to evolve and excel in our fast-forward world, while sharing practical solutions that can be immediately put into practice. A former actor and writer with the internationally acclaimed, Second City Comedy Revue,Lorraine combines her theatre skills with her consulting experience to create keynote speeches and workshops that educate, entertain, and inspire – an engaging style that has been branded as, "edu-tainment".

  Friday Keynote Speaker:  Jeffrey Simpson

Chronic Condition: Why Canada's Health Care System Needs to Be Dragged Into the 21st Century
Not many people these days are talking sense about health care. Canadians are in love with Medicare, but they don't realize that we spend in the top rank for health care among industrial countries--only to get middling results. While this gap widens between spending and performance, we shovel so much extra money into health care that everything else suffers: education, social services, transport, environment. In this insightful talk, Jefferey Simpson taps into new research to explain the history of Medicare, indicate how it compares internationally, illustrate what it's doing to public finances, and debunk some half-baked ideas for reforming it. Simpson also suggests some big, but doable changes that might achieve our two most important objectives: improve quality and reduce the increase in health care expenses.