Our strong bonds with Canada well worth nurturing

of managerial positions, including group station manager at Kings Cross and general manager for customer service for three of the of the busiest Tube lines.

He now uses part of that experience to lead the largest transit agency in Canada, carrying 540 million passengers every year.

Later we met Tim Sluys, CEO and co-founder of Bridge Wireless, which buys, sells, distributes and repairs mobile phones and tablet devises.

There is already a strong Birmingham link here after the business chose Birmingham for its first UK presence.

They have hired their first employee and expect to recruit 20 staff in the first year.

Still on our first day here, we met with Pavi Binning, special adviser to Weston Group. Before joining Weston, one of North America’s largest food processing and distribution groups, Mr Binning was a board member of chief financial officer of Hanson plc and Marconi Corporation, both headquartered in the UK.

We then met David J McFadden QC, counsel in the Toronto offices of Gowling WLG, one of the city’s top business law firms which works with many of the world’s leading organisations to solve their business problems.

Strong Birmingham links were created in 2016 when Gowling merged with Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co, the global law firm which has a base in the city.

Yet another UK link emerged when we met Marc Dupont, head of government relations for the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, whose UK assets include a 48.3 per cent share in Birmingham Airport, which they say is their best-performing global airport holding.

Proof again that Canada is already a huge investor in the West Midlands, a relationship that is destined to become even stronger post-Brexit.

It has been a privilege to join Andy on this brief and hectic trade mission which gave me the opportunity to underline how the Chamber, through its International Hub, is leaving no stone unturned to promote the region at home and abroad.

It was another element of the Chamber – the Midlands Chapter of the British American Business Council – that led a mission to Chicago recently.

This is all part of a huge Chamber programme, some of it in conjunction with the Department for International Trade (DIT), to take Greater Birmingham business to the rest of the world and our path will take us east in September with a trade visit to Turkey.

There was an end to an era at the Chamber last week when our financial director of 22 years, Mike Hibbert, retired. Mike has been a constant through many changes during that time and has been an important part of Chamber operations.

His quiet presence belied a steely determination which was invaluable. We shall miss him and we wish him a long and happy retirement. Paul Faulkner is chief executive at Greater Birmingham Chambers of

Commerce