Toronto was the selected destination for this year’s ICLV delegation of nearly 100 business, civic, and political leaders. Meet Minneapolis was well represented as our board chair Robert Lilligren participated along with board member Adam Duininck, who leads the Mpls Downtown Council. Our counterpart destination organizations in St. Paul and Bloomington participated, as did the mayors of all three cities.

Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America behind Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles. Despite being a much larger region than ours, we found many areas of comparison to study. For example, Toronto aggressively developed and expanded its waterfront. The result is Villers Island, a 100-acre commercial and residential development. Their innovation helps us reimagine what our own Mississippi riverfront area could be.

On the diversity and inclusion front, Canada is farther along than the U.S. in its official acknowledgment of the travesty of injustice in the treatment of Indigenous people, who are known in Canada as First Citizens. The country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission met from 2008 to 2015 to address what has been called cultural genocide. Our delegation’s visit to the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto (NCCT) was a tangible manifestation of the injustices that still need correction.

Some of the ICLV key speakers included Giles Gherson, President & CEO of the Toronto Board of Trade, their regional economic development organization, and Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario (one of Canada’s 10 provinces). Mr. Gherson commented that he envies the efforts of regions like ours that proactively seek to learn from those who have dealt with common issues. His organization has not conducted such visits. However, he is motivated to do so. He coined the phrase, “building relationships at home, abroad,” in describing the tone and purpose of our visit to Toronto. Our delegation also learned of Toronto’s robust film production industry which supports 30,000 local jobs. There are learnings that can help us as we support our state’s film office that recently became a part of Explore Minnesota.

These and other presentations reaffirmed the interconnectivity in commerce, politics and sports between the state of Minnesota and the province of Ontario. And, on a national basis, we acknowledge and appreciate the United States and Canada having the world’s longest unprotected border.

In addition to building relationships with our Canadian colleagues, our delegation strengthened its own ties with quality time learning and strategizing together. ICLV trips are said to compress a year’s worth of networking into three days. I am thankful for our two chambers and look forward to future programming designed to foster collaboration and economic growth.