150th Annual Meeting - December 5, 2025

The meeting will include the election of officers and directors of the Chamber as well as an update on the Chamber's Recruit, Retain and Incubate agenda. 

Sponsorship is available now. This event will sell out.

Keynote Speaker 

Hon. Bernadette Jordan
Consul General
Consulate General of Canada in Boston

Bernadette started her working career in the field of economic development and built an extensive network. She then went on to a career in community news, spending almost 12 years as the special projects manager for the award-winning newspaper publisher Lighthouse Publishing. She received multiple awards in the areas of advertising, promotion, business campaigns and volunteerism. During this time, she also served as the president of the Atlantic Canadian Newspapers Association and as a member of the board of the Canadian Community Newspapers Association.

In 2006, Bernadette left community news to take on a new role in fund development with the Health Services Foundation of the South Shore. Her work helped the foundation raise millions of dollars for health care in her community. She was an active member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, received their Rising Star Award and led a campaign that won their Ten Star Chapter Award.

In 2015, Bernadette ran for and won the federal riding of South Shore-St. Margarets by the largest margin ever in the riding and became the first woman to hold the seat. In her first years in government, she was the chair of the Atlantic Liberal Caucus, a member of the standing committees on the Status of Women and on the Scrutiny of Regulations, and the chair of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. During that time, she introduced a motion calling on the government to deal with abandoned and derelict vessels in Canada’s waterways, which led to legislation passed in 2018 to address this ongoing problem. She was then appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister of democratic institutions. In 2019, she became the first minister of rural economic development. Later that same year she became minister of fisheries, oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard. This made Bernadette the first woman elected in Nova Scotia to hold a seat at the Cabinet table.