Hello everyone and warm welcome to today's webinar doing business in Israel the Canada Israel free trade agreement and trade and innovation opportunities for BC companies. The webinar is organized by the BC government in partnership with the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service and the Canada Israel Chamber of Commerce. My name is Ghana Drost. I'm manager in the trade policy and negotiations branch, BC Ministry of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation. I'm joined today by my colleague Benjamin Kaliznik, senior manager in the same branch and by our distinguished guests. Madam Galit Baram, consul general of Israel in Toronto and Western Canada. Stanley Gomez, consular and senior trade commissioner at the Embassy of Canada in Israel. Audit Orgil, the president at the Canada Israel Chamber of Commerce. I'm here Zaidman, vice president of business development at the kitchen and we name national program coordinator at the National National Research Council of Canada, industrial research assistance program. So dear speakers, we are thankful for your availability and are very excited to have your expertise and input in this webinar. This webinar is part of webinar series where we talk about Canada's free trade agreements advantages and how British Columbian companies can benefit from those when engaging in international trade. So before we get started, I'd like to go over a few housekeeping items so that you know what to expect and how to participate in today's session. So the webinar will last approximately one hour and 30 minutes and there will be five presentations in total. We will start with the opening remarks by the consul general, Galit Baram, and we'll move to a quick presentation of Canada's free trade agreements, Canada Israel free trade agreement. And then we'll move to going to doing business in Israel and how we see companies can take advantage of expert and part of opportunities there. These two presentations will be delivered by Stanley and I, and we will then move to audits presentation of the support that the Canada Israel Chamber of Commerce is offering to intensify Canada Israel trade. Then we will jump into Amir's presentation of the Israeli food tech landscape and opportunities that it offers to companies like you. Finally, Wei will walk us through the joint Canada Israel 2020 21 collaborative industrial research and development call for proposals that is open for collaborative Canada Israel projects focused on developing innovative products, processes and technology based services. We will have Q&A session at the end of the webinar and you will have an opportunity to submit text questions to presenters by typing them into questions pane of the control panel at any time during the webinar. And please indicate the name of the speaker who you want the question to be answered by. If you run out of time at the Q&A session, we will follow up with you individually. And you may also wish to explore the handouts session of the go to webinar panel where you will find today's presentation deck, and also information on Canada's international free trade agreements application in different sectors. You will receive a recording of today's webinar, along with the presentations in the follow up email. So without further ado, I now will pass the floor to Madame Gallit Baram, Consul General of Israel in Toronto and Western Canada for the opening remarks. Madame Gallit Baram, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Thank you Ghana and thank you all for finding the time to join us tomorrow. Today this being in Tel Aviv in Jerusalem in Israel. It's a great opportunity as I see it to bring people together and to discuss business. I'm glad to see my colleague Stanley Gomez, a Canadian representing your country in Israel. I'm doing the same here representing Israel in Canada and our good friends here from the Canada Israel Chamber of Commerce. They're here as well. This is a great opportunity with the 1997 one of the leading countries in the world when it comes to innovation and technology. Canada has a lot to offer with the with the innovative hubs, mainly in the Toronto greater Toronto area, and in British Columbia and it attracts a lot of attention on the side of the Israeli business community. Now we've called veggie and in the management of evil that on the other hand, there is a lot of activity that is conducted online, such as this event, for example, and the promising thing that is happening is that we see a rising number of Canadian companies that participate in economic events in Israel and events that have to do with Israeli innovation and technology and this is wonderful because geography no longer is an obstacle. There is no need to purchase a ticket and fly to Israel and spend money on that. Everything is conducted easily online and at least until after this pandemic is behind us. There is great potential actually to learn about opportunities in the Israeli market and for Israelis to learn about opportunities here in Canada. So what can I say? I hope that this pandemic will soon be behind us. We'll be able to meet each other in person. We'll be able to travel again between Israel and Canada. There is so much to do and so much to achieve. I would like to wish all the participants a good luck in finding partners in finding opportunities, whether in the Israeli market or in the Canadian market. As we say in Hebrew, your success is our success. And I would like to say that we, the Israeli consulates in Toronto and Western Canada are at your service. We're very active on social media. We're Israel in Toronto, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram. We're active on LinkedIn as well. Well, thank you Madam Consul General. We'll be switching our cameras off for the time of presentation and we'll turn them back on for the Q&A session. So let's get started. The branch I work in represents BC interests in free trade agreement negotiations and trade disputes that affect BC. We also work to increase businesses awareness of the opportunities that free trade agreements and offer and we do assist businesses dealing with trade issues that they face. So today we'll go over a little about our ministry, what free trade agreements do, Canada, Israel free trade agreement and what opportunities it offers for goods. I will also show you some tools and resources at the end of the presentation. I understand that FTAs are long, complex and might be technical and I'm here to help you to navigate their web. So if you have a question or concern, please raise your hand, send your question in and we will address it. So the Ministry of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation aims to make life more affordable for British Columbians by building a strong sustainable economy and improve the standard of living. There are many ways to foster this economic recovery and growth. One way is to encourage businesses to leverage the opportunities found in free trade agreements and of course diversify their expert markets. And this is our job today. With that, I'd like to kick it off with a short welcome video from the Minister of State for Trade, who will explain what support is available to you. Hello, I'm George Chao, Minister of State for Trade. I'm pleased to add my support and welcome you to this session. The goal for this session is to share the benefits and opportunity of Canada's domestic and international free trade agreements. And to ensure that everyone in BC's diverse regions, communities and sectors receive the information needed. Free trade agreements help open new markets as well as events and protect BC's competitive advantages. They are a critical part of attracting new investment into BC's regions. They apply to all sector of the economy, including forestry, agricultural, intellectual property, clean tech and mining, to name just a few. I'm proud to say that last year we held close to 50 information sessions like this one with approximately 1500 participants covering all of BC's regions. We have also held sessions for indigenous businesses and women-owned businesses. Now, because of COVID-19, we are continuing the webinars and my hope is we can resume in-person sessions when the time is right. The COVID-19 pandemic has made international trade much more challenging for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, the very good news is Canada has 14 free trade agreements covering 51 countries, including a new Canada, US, Mexico agreement and agreement with the European Union, Japan, Korea and many others. That use correctly can help lower your costs and provide much needed certainty in these uncertain times. Three trade agreements are complex. My staff are here today to help you understand how they work. I want to ensure that you are supported as you plan for the future. We are also offering help with export and trade readiness through our export navigator program. And we have in-market experts and other resources available in Canada that you will hear about today. I wish you all a successful info session. Thank you. Free trade agreements do. And of course, if you're familiar at all with the World Trade Organization and the access that that provides to you as a business, that is sort of the key jumping off point for free trade agreements. They build on that access. So, you know, it is trade between two or more jurisdictions. That's what free trade agreements do. They create that economic trade relationship. And so if that, if we're talking about the Canada-Israel agreement, of course, that is a bilateral agreement. But of course, Canada is also a member of more than just bilateral agreements and is involved in many multilateral agreements as well. And so I think most people tend to think about free trade agreements as tariff reduction tools. And of course, that is one of the more tangible aspects of free trade agreements. But, you know, so reducing tariffs, of course, means that they reduce costs for you as a business. But free trade agreements typically cover much more than just goods access. They cover goods, but they also cover services, investment, government procurement, intellectual property, things like the environment and labor. And there seems to be overall a bit of a, there's a progression in terms of Canada's FTAs. The more traditional FTAs, such as the Canada-Israel FTA, when it was first negotiated, were really more goods focused. And as time has gone on and Canada's FTAs have been more modernized, they have tended to cover more of those elements that you see in the fourth bullet on the screen. In particular in the, you know, in the labor and environment side, but also on the inclusive trade side. And so what inclusive trade means is that, you know, more and more Canada's trade agenda is that it is more and more concerned with ensuring that the benefits of trade agreements and the opportunities that come out of free trade agreements are felt by as much of the population as possible. And so that includes Indigenous and women, and so Canada's FTAs have really been modernized in that sense. And I think just quickly, the other thing that FTAs do are that they provide a recourse for disputes. And that is really just all about providing certainty and knowing that when we enter into free trade agreements, we have, the free trade agreements themselves have teeth and the opportunity to hold trade partners accountable for the obligation that they have signed on for. And really, lastly, just remembering that free trade agreements are a two-way street. Canada takes on those obligations, but our FTA partners take them on as well. Okay. This slide is really just a meant to give you a sense of the landscape. Canada's international free trade agreement landscape. Canada has 14 trade agreements that cover 51 countries. 60% of the world's GDP with access to one and a half billion consumers. And on this map, you can see a network of our FTAs. Light blue are the FTAs that have already been implemented. And there's a little bit of a caveat here. Our map needs to be updated, but you may have heard that the United Kingdom left the European Union on December 31, 2020. And so the Canada-EU trade agreement CEDA stopped applying to Canada-UK trade. There is a bilateral trade continuity agreement in place. And so while this agreement is being ratified, there were arrangements made on both ends to ensure that that preferential trade continues without interruption. And so technically, the UK on this map should be dark blue until that agreement has been ratified. So sometimes, as I said, we have bilateral and other times multilateral agreements and sometimes those overlap. And with this map, you can see the strike pattern is really what indicates that overlap. And Canada is in FTAs with Mexico through the Canada-US-Mexico agreement as well as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, CPTPP. And that's where you see the strike pattern. Sorry, that's where you would see both of those agreements have been implemented. And so that's why that Mexico remains a solid blue colour there. I think the last thing I'll say on this slide is really just that Canada really has a first mover advantage. It has been active in concluding and modernising free trade agreements over the last decade or so. I guess more active than it had been before that. But the point that we often like to make is that this preference will not last forever. As we hear more and more of other countries negotiating free trade agreements with some of our other trade partners. And so just recognising that the preferences and the advantages that you have doesn't last forever. And trying to establish those connections and those trade relationships earlier than later is an advantage. Okay, let's jump into what you are all here to hear about. And that is the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement or the CPTPP. It is not, I guess, as widely known as some of Canada's other agreements. We know that there has been some research done in the last year or so about the awareness of free trade agreements. And unfortunately the overall awareness and utilisation of free trade agreements in Canada is not as high as I think we would like them to be. And some of Canada's FTAs are more or less known. I think as Council General mentioned at the beginning, this agreement was originally concluded back in 1997. And is Canada's second oldest trade agreement after the NAFTA or now KUSMA. The CPTPP was in the modernisation process for the last several years. And the modernised agreement entered into force on September 1st, 2019. And up until now the Canada-Israel trade balance and goods has shown a fairly steady increase. And it actually exceeded $1.6 billion in 2019. Trade data shows that Israel exports to Canada are actually three or four times more than going the opposite way from Canada to Israel. That said, Canada's exports to Israel have doubled over time. Canada is among the top suppliers of fish and seafood to Israel. And BC is the fourth largest trading partner of Israel within the Canadian provinces. CPTPP created a level playing field for BC and Canadian companies with the United States that had already had a trade agreement with Israel. It also maintained an advantage for Canada when Israel concluded trade agreements with the EU and Turkey among others. So of course there is a difference between each trade agreement. Each trade agreement is unique and provides a certain level of access. But as I said earlier, taking advantage of those provisions as soon as possible is to your advantage. Okay, let's jump into some opportunities for goods. I think I've just heard from Ghana and she's still having some problems getting back in. So I will continue the best I can. I apologize for the interruption. Tariff elimination and reduction, tariffs on all from from day one. The agreement has eliminated all tariffs on Canadian industrial goods and on most agricultural fish and seafood products. The modernized CPTPP reduced tariffs on agricultural, agri-food fish and seafood products even further. For example, 98% of Canadian fish and seafood exports enter Israel duty-free in unlimited quantities. And this is up from around 90%. Halibut, cod, salmon, tuna, and many others are now duty-free. Among key Canadian agricultural products that benefit from the new duty-free access are things like cranberries, baked goods, pet food, for instance. Other commodities like canola oil and shelled beans had their tariffs reduced by 40% to 50%, so quite significantly. And it is worth noting that some of the Canadian goods that are excluded from tariff elimination and can be checked on the list A of Israel's tariff schedule under the SIFTA. And so there are, in the next slide, I think we're going to take a look at just things like quotas as well. And so sometimes even when the tariffs haven't been reduced, Canada can gain additional access for certain products into a market such as Israel when the quota allocations are increased. And in other words, the amount that is eligible to enter either duty-free or at a reduced tariff rate. When those quotas are adjusted giving us increased access, then there's another advantage there. And that is what we see here on this next slide. This is just a snapshot of some examples here of agri-products like fish and seafood that have been given volume-limited duty-free access under the modernized agreement. And as I said, these are known as tariff rate quotas. And I think this is all great news. You can see in this table which Canadian commodities received expanded or newly created duty-free access, things like chickpeas, wine, frozen vegetables, apples, dried fruits and nuts and others. And as I said, this table is really is not exhaustive. But if you are interested in a particular commodity, we can certainly do the research for you and let you know what that is. Okay. Just very quickly, I'm going to just mention a very handy tool. What you can see on the screen here is something called Canada Terrafinder. And this is, I mean, if you were to Google this app, it will come up very quickly. It is a very quick and easy way to help you figure out tariffs in the markets where Canada has FTAs, including Israel. And all you need to know is the market that you are interested in. You need to decide whether exporting or importing. And then you need to describe the product. You can, in that description box, you can either just actually describe the product or if you know the HS code for your product, you can also just type that in. And once you do that, the system may ask you a couple of questions about your product just to ensure that it knows what exactly you are looking for. And once you've identified that exactly, it will show you the current tariff rates. And I'm not going to do a live demonstration because I know we're short on time, but it will show you the current rates as well as any phase out in those rates under the relevant free trade agreements. So it's just a very handy tool to get a sense of what those tariffs are, but also get a sense of, you know, perhaps five years from now, a product that you produce will be duty free in a particular market. And you may want to sort of look at opportunities there and plan for that tariff reduction. Okay, this is just a quick slide on opportunities for goods beyond tariffs. Things like improved rules of origin and advanced rulings to claim preferential treatment. This is a feature of all of Canada's FTAs. Really just know that you need to prove that the country of origin for your product is within the free trade area, so within Canada or Israel. And of course there are rules, often very complex. This is something that we're happy to walk you through if you have a question about whether your good qualifies to receive the preferential treatment under a free trade agreement. We can walk through those rules. We can work with our colleagues at the federal government to determine whether that they meet those requirements. The modernized SIPTA has reduced the number of product specific rules of origin in half. So that really reduces the administrative burden for you as a business. The modernized agreement also includes trade facilitation measures that promote simple, clear and predictable procedures designed to reduce spread tape at the border. It also protects and enforces intellectual property rights, which really improves business confidence in a foreign market. It also facilitates cooperation and exchange of information on IP rights. Both Canada and Israel have made commitments to reduce and eliminate technical barriers to trade. This includes things like conformity assessment procedures, technical regulations, standard related measures that can't be used as unjustified barriers to trade. Both countries have agreed that they will strive to minimize and eliminate those barriers wherever possible. Finally, there is a new chapter on e-commerce. It was brought into force just recognizing the importance in our daily lives of e-commerce. The pandemic has shown us that this has become even more important. Both countries committed not to levy customs, duties, fees and other charges on digital products that are transmitted electronically. The chapter also includes commitments to protect personal information of e-commerce users and also protect them from fraudulent commercial practices such as online scams. So this is Ghana's last slide. I don't think we've got her rejoined yet, so I'll just keep going. Our trade policy and negotiations branch is here to support you and can really answer any questions that you might have about trade agreements, trade barriers or other trade related issues. There are many different contact boxes here, but I'll highlight just a few. Trade readiness and services branch box. Here you can find a link to the BC's Export Navigator program. This provides free support and guidance to help your business grow outside of BC with seven offices in BC's, all of BC's regions. They are community based. They have community based export specialists who can help connect your business to market information, export programs, financial services and business development experts. BC also has its own network of trade and investment representative offices, offices in many countries including the US, the Asia Pacific and Europe. They are there to assist BC companies to export their goods and services to specific markets. They can provide you with local market knowledge and intelligence. They can help to identify key contacts in market and assist with targeting trade shows and visits to markets. And I will let Stanley talk to the federal trade support services available in a bit. And also, Ghana, I think just wanted to mention that we're also really interested to hear about any barriers you are facing. There is a very quick way to report a trade barrier, which is listed on the site. It's a hyperlink. And you get a copy of this presentation. If you click on that link there, it will take you directly to a government of Canada webpage where you can report a trade barrier. But we are also very happy to hear of any of these barriers so that we can work with our federal colleagues to make sure that they're at least known and then addressed as quickly as possible. Finally, I'll just note that there are several social media channels there where you can get the latest updates on different markets and any activities that are going on in our division. Okay, that's the end of Ghana's presentation. I think we still have the other presenters connected. And so I'm going to now hand it off to Stanley to jump right into his presentation. And please, I know I've seen quite a few questions coming in through the question pane. So please continue to do that. And we will address those later on. Go ahead, Stanley. Sure. Perfect. Thank you, everybody. I'm from Tel Aviv, hopefully this slide. I thought I'd start off by showing you a map of Israel, not because I wanted you to see the map of Israel, but because typically when I meet Canadians, they will talk to me about Tel Aviv and they'll talk about Jerusalem, but they don't always know a little bit about the country. So we're based in Tel Aviv and if you are in Tel Aviv going up north, you'll take about two, two and a half hours depending on how fast you go. And you'll run across this port city of Haifa in Tel, in Tel Aviv or some of the bigger mulches of one of Israel's major universities. And around that comes the ecosystem that comes with it. Being north and close to the port, it's also the industrial hub. So a lot of the refineries and petrochemical industries are all based there. Now back down into Tel Aviv, if you go across about 10 kilometers, you are really within the tech hub of Tel Aviv and this is really where you'll find all the concentration of the tech companies. Jerusalem typically does not have a big tech hub. It tends to be more the seat of the government and of course the Hebrew University is located there. From Tel Aviv, if you drive down to the bottom, it's about four hours, four and a half hours depending on how fast you drive. And on your way down, you'll run into the city of Bersheba. Bersheba is the beginning of your entrance into the negative desert. And this is really where most of the technology around Klevec, water, and the industries that, and most of us also will be there to see here. It's GDP is listed out there. It's about, most of Israel's GDP comes from services like cat-ups. I mean, it's not government. Another interesting statement that we always talked about is that, you know, eight and a half, nine percent of the economy really is responsible for the majority of the exports, which is mainly in the tech business. And you can see a general theme here. Most of the economy is focused around tech and needless to say, it drives a lot of decision-making on how businesses run. Next slide, please. I think that systematically there are a couple of things that we wanted to, as two countries, for both of us, the U.S. is the greatest trading partner. And by that I mean, the first thing that Canadians will think about is how do we get to the European East? We are doing this presentation today. I'd say most of the Canadian companies I speak to have teams, sales teams, marketing teams, whatever you call them, who are either European folks or Middle Eastern folks. And when you think about the Middle East, you tend to be more Arab country focused. So we'll find during Arab health and Dubai or food, health foods, you'll see that Canada has 30, 40 companies in the Caribbean, and up to recently, you know, getting from Middle East to between, we'll move a little bit more traffic. The job of the government is to make sure that the infrastructure for business is in place. And that's a big part of what we've done over the years. We've talked about the future agreement early, but the only thing I'll say to that is that when you as a business go to clear your goods and customs, or you're trying to find tariff information, not many people realize that is a function of the trade agreement. So bear in mind that behind just the tariff issue, there is a whole bunch of infrastructure that goes into place, which really makes things happen. And for the most part, in our experience of training this year there, that's where Canada has only four or five of these agreements globally and so does Israel. And that should give you the significance of what each sign is for the forefront of our connectivity. You know, yeah, Zoom does replace some of the travel, but if you can't get for me to be quickly, you're less likely to jump on a plane. And thankfully, you're right up to recently, our Canada is flying fairly compacted. And a lot of people may not know, but a lot of our leading research centers like the RIDRC, I think I've met almost 15, 16 vice presidents of universities who come here regularly to talk about how they can do work together. And we're constantly listening to what they have to say because you all know that almost every university nowadays has an incubator. These incubators are always looking for new tech, new ideas, and new money, and we're both saying this is to try to make sure that we can grow a secret system. Yeah, you might, I don't know if you know this, you folks would know the Center for Brain and Aging Health, they're based out of Toronto, they work with Rick Hansen, they're instituted all the time, and they're plugged into a lot of the programming that goes on here as well, very much focused in the area of licensing. So, next slide please. A very quick glimpse of this slide and, you know, another question I've always asked is, so what goes up and down in ships from between Israel and, and much to my surprise and perhaps to many of you, you'll see diamonds on the top of them. And of course, there's agriculture as our main two exports. There's our aircraft power plants and a whole bunch of other things, but it's interesting enough. I just thought I'd share that with you because it's pretty interesting. Next slide please. One of the things that we see from Canadian businesses coming over here to Israelis that there are certain themes that you'll find most of our institutional investors, I would say, the banks, the pension funds, they come here to look for emerging technologies and where they can put the money in the next generation company. This is not investing in companies specifically, but they're all in the fund of funds. We also see a lot of our major banks coming over for specific technology, whether it's in the area of big data or analytics is often the case. So, or any of this customer facing and tech, that's the kind of stuff we see considerably. We see a lot of smaller companies coming by, you know, by, and again, they're, they're really looking for what I always call components of the technology supply chain. So, whether it's a piece of software piece of hardware, or it's just tech collaboration is this main what I see. So if you have, of course, the traditional goods and services that we that go and you'll notice on that list is a bunch of engineering companies that work on the, the, the light rail here in Israel. You know, for a couple of years, but Marty is bidding for trains and rolling stocks and fly there. And then of course there's the areas of space and aircraft. Next slide please. And in this slide, the only thing I'll break very your attention is really that the first of the first little icon that says start of central, but I really wanted to point to you that this wonderful link there that you ought to really take a look at and it's quite detail. There's a lot of places I've been around the world where you can actually Google and find any kind of company and looking for whether you're trying to find a partner or, or you're interested to see what is available and what is, what is his role of doing in this area. So I'm going to put my glasses on to see him. It's called a sort of central finder. It's a finder. It's called a finder and a very useful tool and I encourage you guys to please take a look at it. You'll be surprised how information comes from there. The other three I will say on the list are really the big players in Israel we work with them very closely. And if you're interested in all to know more, feel free to Google them and check out their websites. Next slide please. So as you know we have a curriculum service and most of the programming that is done locally with Industry Canada or Promise is said to be very much focused internally. Our business is all about export. And I have to point this particular slide to you along with the link on the bottom and encourage you to look at this, because it's pretty comprehensive and covers a lot of different areas. The first one being, if you're just an FME and you're looking to do to export, then you can, you can apply for funds through there. And if you're in the space of innovation and you kind of protect your IP or do something different, you can apply for kind of innovation funding. That is very much related to industry, the aerospace industry or technology industries. As an industry you can apply for funding that allows you to have trade missions to Israel and any part of the world to be fair. And of course the final funding is about taxes for FDI into Canada if you want to do something specific to attract. The next slide is pretty interesting and I just put the link up if you browse through the next couple of pages below that you'll see a whole host of other links. The next slide please. Similarly, on the next slide you'll see us talk about two major programs that we work with in global affairs. We call the Canadian Technology Accelerator. The Canadian Technology Accelerator is really designed for us to put money together for certain thematic, I would say thematic programming. And really the thematic program is where you can come to Israel with a particular group and focus on a sector that you are interested in. We were trying to do that just before COVID and in that case most of the money that we were putting into a company we were targeting were in the area of telemedicine. And I say telemedicine, but it leaves me because in there is a whole host of companies that do things digitally in the area of medicine. So quite an interesting program. It's becoming more and more popular across the world as Canadian companies start to look at how do you take new tech that's not completely baked and done yet get exposed to international markets either to look for JVs and partnerships or including markets. The PDA what we call is the product development accelerator. Another very interesting program I encourage you again please take a look at this. It's not available to do all across it's something unique to the trade commercial service. And if you want to look at that again this is you've got an idea you've got a product is it's not done but you'd like to put some money into it and look at it for ways to make it better. Very a very cool program and I have to say much to my surprise and often sadness it's a bit out of the subscribe so please take a look at it. We also have programs for women in business the SIFT agreement very much has a chapter focused on gender. So we're really interested to see if we can tap companies led by women to take advantage of this programming as well. It is often used but it's often used to the states increasingly a little bit more towards Asia, but we haven't really done one here in Israel, and we'd love to do one. So, yeah, take a look at that. The accelerates great program is more domestic but again, I encourage you to look at it. It's great information and will give you different ways that you can examine how you can grow your business. Next slide please. So finally we're on to what do we do here in the embassy and where is the focus of our program. So needless to say, like we were working on for the last year or year and a half on renewing the industrial corporation agreement. It is very much of interest to both our countries and many companies, hence the NRC is presenting at the end. And we really think that this new updated version will be much more interesting to companies because it's a bit more flexible in what you can and cannot do. We will always do that because there's one way or first to talk to our companies as we are today. And a big thank you to our colleagues in BC for doing this today. So, you know, from a macro level at our programming, our focus is very much in this whole you see here when we started off before COVID and like you all know everything that happened before COVID is just getting accelerated. But the teams in general really stayed the same. The life science that has been in my experience, the place where Canada and Israel seem to have just an automatically natural fit. Whether it's intelligence and brain health analytics, you know, using using technology to scan data images and give you results that there's a lot of work going in this area. Typically, we see a lot of we see a very strong showing of Canadians and Arab health in Dubai. We really think in hopes that we can do something together. In fact, just before the the the lockdown, we were already planning for the next full in Dubai, where we were hoping to do work together with Canadian and Israeli companies in Dubai, but you know, it's all over the news and all the TV now but that's something we had started a couple of months way before all this came into being. And we're quite excited that this will be an interesting opportunity. So here you have innovation and I mentioned the CTA, the technology accelerator program, along with Waterloo University, Waterloo, the City of Waterloo and Community Tech. We have put it all together. And we hope that as soon as the COVID restrictions and travel are done, we'll pick that one up. And on this vehicle, we have Invest Ottawa, along with the Israel Innovation Authority, our discussions about how they can use the common ecosystem for both companies to test their technologies and work together with each other. In fact, most of our work here already is about trade policy. We talked about the pre-treat agreement, but a lot of the work we do is behind the themes of customs and websites and make sure that information is easily available and accessible. I won't talk too much about the food sector because we have a lot of our colleagues coming up to present a little further down. Amir has a great presentation for you and I think he is super excited. We wanted to bring him into this presentation so that you can see something that is not typically seen here. We want to talk about tech. We don't always talk about food, but this is a very exciting area and I'll let you look forward to that presentation. Now, we had plans to promote the SIFTA agreement through the major SHES programs here. We have everything in place to do it, which has got to make sure that we wait for the lockdown stand and we'll be off to the races. In the technology space is pretty, they don't call it bread and butter, but it's something we do every day. We have conversations about technology all the time. And finally, as I mentioned, we meet to university professors here all the time. And generally, typically speaking, the trade commission service does not work with universities, but I paid more attention to that area because of the amount of work that is unfolding in the incubation space within universities. It's got their own ecosystems now and I think it's an interesting place to think and watch. So I'm going to end my presentation here and by saying that our job as the trade commission service is to find new partners and thank you to the BC government for being a partner. You'll hear how I did a little while ago at the chamber, another great partner. I'm here again, a good partner for us here in Israel and finding an RC. An RC has been the backbone of what we do in Israel in tech and a big shout out to my colleagues there. Thank you very much. That's the end of my presentation and I hope you guys enjoyed it. Thank you so much Stanley for your very comprehensive presentation on doing business in Israel and opportunities available for BC companies in various sectors and what trade commission service in Israel can do for you. So now I'd like to pass the floor to Audit Orgil, president of the Canada Israel Chamber of Commerce for his presentation on building bridges between Canada and Israel. Audit floor is yours. Thank you very much and thank you for having me on. Thank you for all your efforts and then for stepping in very and doing a great job despite what you may think it's also a pleasure to share the platform with the Consul General Khalid Baran. We've done many events together, as well as my friend and partner in Israel and Tel Aviv Stanley Gomez. So thank you all. And we had very appreciative to be to be on the on this program. So as you said, I mean now the Canada Israel Chamber of Commerce, you know our mandate is many ways is to build bridges between Canada and Israel. You've got my name there as well as Leora Brahmovich who is our managing director of corporate development and really as I often say my right and left hand in helping me out in a number of things to support our membership base. We can not flip the next on to the next chart next page. So again, what we feel and Stanley somewhat touched upon this I mean again there's a global mindset for global world at the Canada Israel Chamber of Commerce. We're an NGO. Our membership is based, you know, on we've got a number of individual businesses professionals and individuals across all the provinces in Canada who want to learn and again like the individuals on the show learn about and potentially be business and trade. You know, with Israeli companies and in the Israeli market space. Next slide. Again, our mission again just to repeat myself one more time is to foster and promote bilateral trade between Canada and Israel. We have an established, you know, social forum for our professionals to meet others and get acquainted to the Israeli market. We attempt and we're always looking to update our members on the business opportunities and the enhanced bilateral trade that goes on. We've historically done this through personal events and dinners and lunches and receptions. Currently, like everybody, we are doing these things virtually. We look forward to, you know, that time and hopefully it's in the third or fourth quarter this year where we can get back to events. But just in the last four or five months, we've had about seven virtual events. We've got three planned, including this one for the month of January and already one, if not two, tentatively planned for February. So we're very busy, very active. I'll talk a little bit more about the kind of events we have. We provide panels and what we get for speakers to discuss matters that are on Israel. We have a database that continues to grow of our membership base that allows them to network and trade, find partners and individuals that they can work with both Canada and Israel. This coming year, we will organize our first delegation. We've been involved in a number of others partnering with provincial and federal governments and allowing individuals and corporations to go back and forth between Israel. And again, we will support and we're excited to work with our federal and provincial partners. In this case, it's the government of BC. Also, we work with the government of Ontario historically, Quebec, and we're looking to branch out across Canada with all the governments to help promote this rate. Next slide, Janet. As I mentioned, again, we've had a number of conferences cover a realm of, you know, topics from educational to social to promotional. And again, these could be, you know, things that are specifically and often directly related to Israel. And at times, for our members, we'll provide lots of different events that will help our membership base just to help them grow their business in a variety of different ways. Next slide, Janet. Our structure, I mean, we have a business group and this coming year we're forming a leadership group. Historically, the presentations have focused on investments. Real estate, there's opportunities, capital markets, I mean, there's more and more business on that end between Israeli companies and Canadian companies who are looking to list in Canada, looking for investors, looking for support on that end. We've been involved in blockchain and cryptocurrency just to get presenting opportunities on the technology side. I think Stanley alluded, these are some many areas that Israel is very involved in. Canada provides a forum for some of these areas. And then again, for our young leadership, and again, if there are young people out there, we're looking to help them grow and develop their personal growth business as well. We do have a strong belief in SRI, the social responsibility as an organization. Next slide, Janet. So our services, when we talk about three areas, you know, market expansion, again, it's the opportunity to work again with both the government of Israel and the government here in Canada, provincially and federally, putting people together. We have, you know, we work with the Ministry of Tourism, the Israeli Minister of Tourism here, we work with the Ministry of Economic Affairs with the Consul General's office. Again, hoping to make introductions and helping Canadian businesses that they can't directly connect to our network of individuals and giving them the opportunity to expand their market. This is an event. We are on a variety of different social mediums, presenting and advising our membership based on opportunities and news that comes out from Israel on potential opportunities that they could help them grow their businesses. And then exposure. Again, with our, with our, again, we are one of the things that we've got a new website that will be up and running in about the next week. So on that website will be the opportunity for our businesses and membership members to present their product or looking at creating a marketplace to allow the again our small media enterprises to share and work with other businesses and sell their products, even within our own equally. Next slide, Janet. So in the end, again, as a, as a chamber of commerce, I mean, our number one mandate again overall is to promote bilateral trade between Canada and Israel and we do that with our partners who I've mentioned now a few times. But in addition to that, again, just to create value for our membership base, which can tend to be mostly the small businesses and a lot of professionals and young people and helping them grow and develop themselves and create opportunities for them. If anybody is interested in hearing more, obviously I'll be here to answer any questions. My email is there, the or is there happy to chat as well as that information. So again, again, thank you. Thank you then as well for taking over for Ghana. I only reiterate one more thing that the console general said I know that we are hopefully in the seventh inning of a ninth inning ballgame which is this COVID pandemic. I'd encourage everybody stay safe, stay, stay positive and looking forward to meeting many of you in person, you know, over the next few months as we get through all this. So thank you very much again again for all the work you've done and I'll turn it back to you. Thank you so much audit. Thanks for your presentation. I'm now conscious of the time left. So without further ado, I would like to introduce our next speaker for today, Amir Zaidman, Vice President of Business Development at the Kitchen who will present on Israel's food landscape. So thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Good morning to the folks in Canada and evening to the people here in Israel. As I mentioned, my name is Amir Zaidman. I'm going to try to be conscious with the time because we don't have much time left on this session. The presentation I'm going to give you is not about Israel's food, it's about Israel's food tech scene and what we do at the Kitchen Hub. So what I'm saying food and justice is a short explanation or as a background to set the ground. I'm talking about the startups that are active in Israel. The startup scenes were mentioned in presentation before me, but this is the sector of startups that are revolutionizing or disrupting the food industry and we call that food tech for those of you who are not familiar. So I'm going to start by telling you a couple of points about the Strauss Group and the reason is that the Strauss Group is the parent company of the Kitchen Hub. And Strauss is Israel's largest food company. It operates in 22 different countries around the world with a turnover of about $2.5 billion. It has over 14,000 employees. It's a relatively large coffee company operating on a global scale. It's the largest company in the world for fresh dips in spreads. We know how to make a hummus and we sell it all over the world. In Canada, it's under the brand Obella, if you've noticed, taken in the US under Sambra. So this is about Strauss moving on. The Kitchen Hub is a technological incubator and an early stage investor in startups that are active in food tech. We consider ourselves companies builders because we provide a set of services other than the funding. We, of course, invest money. We provide a set of services and support and we are commercializing or assisting our companies in commercialization. There are part of an Israeli program, which is under the Israeli Innovation Authority, which provides funding for startups. So the funding that we provide is partly industrial private money from the Strauss Group and partly from the Israeli Innovation Authority under the incubators program. In most of the investors that you would see in venture capital are looking to work with existing startup companies. We do that, but we also have a model where we create our own startup companies. We search for technologies in academic institutions. And once we find something, an IP, a patent, a technology science that is very interesting to us in our space, we license this underlying IP. We recruit a team, we provide the funding and we launch a startup and then we bring them into our program and support it to fruition. So the support that we provide our companies, the startup companies, is like a layered model. First of all, there's us, there's the kitchen team with technology expert, business experts and HR and operations. There's also the Strauss Group that supports us in any aspect that is required. As I mentioned, is a fully integrated food company. So anything a food startup can require. And we have a global network of partners, which you can see on the map in this slide, which are working together with us for the benefit of our portfolio companies, some of the largest food companies in the world from Mitsui, conglomerate in Japan, all the way to PepsiCo based in the US. All of those are working together with us. What we've done since launch, we've invested in 18 companies that all together raised over $55 million. I don't want to go into all the details for the benefit of time. So food tech, I'm going to turn from talking about the kitchen to talking about food tech in general. What do we see happening in food tech and where is the innovation coming from. In my point of view, there's mainly five different areas. The hardest and most important one is alternative proteins. We see the market markets being swept with products based on different technologies. But those products are mostly from one of three sources or ingredients, plant based proteins. We've seen that happening in dairy. The dairy that is now being consumed specifically, milk replacement. So almond milk and oats milk and soy, etc. We see this starting to happen in meat companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. We have an initial traction in eggs. She's not so much yet, but again, plant based is big cultivated proteins, which means that you take cells and you grow them into tissues and single cell proteins, which are based on renewable resources like pungent yeast and algae. So this is on the alternative protein side. We see a lot of new technologies coming from biotech into food, mostly fermentation technologies, which allows us to take microbes, different type of microorganisms. Re-engineering to basically produce whatever protein or enzyme that we want them to produce and this is a huge trend now. In food tech, a lot of issues around health and wellness. There's a lot of personalization of food or food that is better for you, both in terms that it's, well, less bad for you. So clean and short label and without any additive or clean food that actually has a lot of health benefits. So these are also things that are going into the market. Another big trend globally is convenience and logistics. So deliveries and this got even so much bigger during COVID, but it was big before and we anticipate it will stay that way. So, you know, delivery platforms from restaurants or from supermarkets, also meal kits where you get a box into your house and you can create your own meal. A huge improvement online and delivery also physical platforms that allows you to go into a supermarket and live without having to pass through the cash register like Amazon Go. And there are a lot of startups that are developing these technologies for the benefit of supermarket chains that are not Amazon.  Well, globally in many different segments, but specifically in food tech because of the amount of impact that food has on the planet with packages and greenhouse gases. And the amount of food that is being wasted and lost. So a lot of startups are innovating in these areas of packaging greenhouse gases and reduction of food waste. So those are the global trends that we see. And I would like to give a very brief review of a few of the companies that we have in the kitchen. Just so you know what it is that we are dealing with. So first company I want to talk about is called Zero Egg. It's a company that is developing plant-based egg. This egg comes either in a form of a powder which goes into industrial players or liquid which can be used by anyone. And it can replace egg in any application that you can think of, starting with scramble and omelette all the way to pastries and those that you need the eggs in. And even it can form and create the egg form and the eggs. So it's completely vegan and it can replace egg in all applications. So first in company is a company that's called Aliform. I talked about cultivated meat. So Aliform is taking cells from cow like a biopsy and generating cell lines and using biotech technologies and tissue engineering and cell biology, reproducing those cells to create the tissues, muscle tissues, fat tissues that together combine to create pieces of meat, steaks that are real meat, just don't require butchering a cow to get them. So growing cells in biofermenters in order to create steaks which are again real meat but without soldering any cows. So dairy dairy is doing something almost similar but for dairy. So I talked about fermentation, they're using engineered microorganisms that can express the proteins that you would naturally find in dairy. So you can produce those dairy proteins without having to milk a cow. And then from there, from having those proteins, we reconstruct dairy products which are not plant based they actually have the ingredients that you would find in real dairy products, like cheese, yogurt, milk, et cetera. So very, very close to the real thing. It's not plant based. It's based on the same proteins that you will find in dairy except we don't need the actual cows in order to produce those. Another company in proteins, I mentioned single cell proteins, so Yip is a company that is using yeast. So think about, okay, so this is a microorganism which is made mostly from proteins like a lot of organisms. What we do is we break them up and we use the proteins that are naturally existing in yeast, no change required, there's no genetic engineering or anything. And the beautiful thing is that this company is relying on the beer industry that has using a lot of yeast for fermentation during the processing and producing of beer. And yeast is a side stream of that industry and we can take the yeast from the beer industry and extract proteins from what is a side stream of another food or, in this case, beverage industry. So completely circular economy approach in this. And the last, maybe more. My protein is engineering proteins to replace sugar. So we all want to use less sweeteners, sugars and calories. They are replacing sugars with proteins, which is an amazing idea. So vegetables, what you see on the right side is their product and what you see on the left side is, if you take what's on the right side and you put it in a pot with boiling water for five minutes you get a full meal. These are vegetables that are wrapping a meal inside them. And it's a ready to cook meal which is completely healthy and extremely tasty and beautiful, which is made from otherwise discarded vegetables that the supermarkets would not put on on display in the supermarket on the shelves, because they don't look good so we take them. We fill them up, we make sort of sheets out of them and create those pouches and fill them up with nutritional, our nutritious and tasty meals and the vegetable of the outside is a part of the meal. And this is the last one. A huge demand for natural vanilla, which is coming almost exclusively from Madagascar. Vanilla Vida is changing that and developing technologies for indoor farming of vanilla and unique technologies for the curing for taking the green vanilla beans, which has almost no flavor and aroma and creating the black vanilla beans with a very unique technology that allows the control of the different steps in that matter so this is a quick review of some of the companies that we cook in the kitchen, all of them with very promising potential and technologies. Very, very briefly about what's happening in food tech in Israel, I only have a couple of slides on that so we continuously as the kitchen up to work with startup nation central and we continue continuously mapping what's happening in Israeli food tech and agree food tech. And now that we release annually about the different sectors and different startups that are active in the different sectors. I don't want to go into all the details of the statistics that are on this slide you can have you have these slides on the handout so you can see it for for yourself this is data from startup nation central just to mention that during you can see the equity investments trend in food tech in Israel, which is growing on the left side is is the amount of money that was invested and you can see that in 2020 we're going to be the most or the best year in investing in food tech today with over 200 million dollars invested in Israeli food tech startups and I'm going to skip that just to mention that other than investing we are also doing events and meetups and we have an annual event. The last one was in September we didn't do one in 2020 is the main food tech event in Israel, it is called food tech. And in the last one we had representative from 45 different countries and all together, almost 1500 attendees. And with that, I'm going to thank you and give you my contact which is right here on the bottom of the slide and I'll be waiting for your questions if you have any at the end of the session. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Amir. Thanks for this mouth's watering presentation. And without further ado, I wanted to introduce our last speaker Wainin the national program coordinator at the National Research Council of Canada for his presentation on the Eureka call for proposals. Good afternoon. Good evening, everyone. My name is Wainin industrial technology advisor and also the program coordinator for Canada Israel industrial collaboration program with the National Research Council of Canada industrial research assistance program. Next one. The National Research Council of Canada is the federal government's premier R&D organization and is committed to advancing knowledge through science supporting business innovation and supporting government of Canada's science agenda, including the innovation and a skills plan. Next. So the industrial research assistance program. In brief, the services it offers is the technical business advice provide a financial assistance to companies that conduct innovation projects and then link SMEs with the local and international opportunities. And there is a small team within Arab is Arab international. The mandate is to connect Canadian innovators with the international R&D partners to help them grow their business beyond Canada's borders. Next. I'd like to bring to your attention about the Canada Israel Eureka call for proposal. Working with the Israel Innovation Authority IAA MRC Arab. Important partner in Israel. We launched the call in last November the third for joint R&D projects between Canadian and Israeli organizations and in Canada only SMEs can be considered for funding through MRC Arab. The other Canadian participants, they can participate in the projects but they have to secure funding from the other sources. Next. Although this call invites proposals relates to any technical or market area, special attention is being given to the listed sectors, including health and biosensors, digital technology, agriculture technology, and clean technology. And behind each focus there are some sub sectors. I'm not going to go into the detail. Ghana can forward my presentation to all the participants after this webinar. Next. The registration for this round of a call for proposal is next week, January 21. And the Canadian expression of interest submission deadline is 27. The consortium agreement that joined proposal, the deadline is March 18 to be completed by both Canadian and Israeli companies. For the detailed registration guidelines, I provided a white link over here. It offers a step by step guidance to whether you are not qualified for this round of a call for proposal, how to apply, and etc. Next. For Canadian SMEs to apply the company here in Canada, you must have an innovative technology, process, software, and etc. It's not for like a duplication of what has already been done or what has already been successfully marketed in the market. For Canadian SMEs, minimum 10 people employee and minimum $1 million in revenue. Next. To be considered for potential funding, the applicants, they must form a consortium with a company or organization in Israel. In Canada, again, is SME company with less than 500 people. And then the Canadian research organizations and can participate as subcontractor. Next. The eligible project participants selected by Arab and in Israel in this collaborative projects. The funding is from NRC, Arab, and the first and foremost, the proposed projects needs to meet Arab funding rules and regulations. And most important requirement is for the financial contribution. No one country company should contribute more than 75, sorry, 70% of the total project cost and the less than 30% of the total project cost. And I think there are traditionally, there are a lot of questions regarding these particular requirements. I have provided my email address at the end of the presentation. So send me email if you are interested in this round of call and then need more clear answer on these particular requirements. Next. In Canada, this call for proposal again offered through NRC Arab. And then NRC Arab, the industrial technology advisor is responsible for delivering and managing the proposed project and also the funding. The eligible Canadian SME will receive up to 50% reimbursement of eligible project costs. And up to maximum total funding amount of $600,000 Canadian dollars over 12 to maximum 12 months. And if you request more than top month, then that will be treat case by case basis, and then discuss the extension with the industrial technology advisor. And then to identify a taken industrial technology advisor if your current sorry if your company current does not have one. I have provided a phone number for you to call the people answer is client engagement advisor, he is going to help you identify a industrial technology advisor for you to discuss your proposed project for this round of call, or your future potential projects. Next. In Israel, this call for proposal is offered through the Israel Innovation Authority, IAA, which is responsible for delivery of this call, and also management of any resulting funding arrangements and agreements. Financial support may be provided to eligible Israeli companies in support of the industrial research or technological development activities. The Israeli companies may receive up to 50% of the Israeli R&D costs, and then and also the plus incentives. For the detail, and you should consult with IAA, I have also provided the contact link. Next, I'm not going to go through the detailed application process over here, and then I provided a website, please visit this particular website. It offered a step by step process for both Canadian and Israeli companies to discuss the proposed project, which with each respective authority and also the people responsible. Next. In Canada, first register if you are interested, the deadline again is January 21, and then once you qualify and you will be given a expression of interest template for you to fill the deadline is January 27. Next. For Israeli application process, again consult the website here provided. Next. In Canada, I am your contact person, and you have my email address here, and Israel, my counterpart Yifat is the contact person, and her email is over here. Ghana, you can forward my presentation to all the participants here, and for those people interested and have questions, please just send questions to my email, and then I will answer you as soon as I can. Thank you, that is my presentation. Thank you very much, Ray, and I think we're over time already, but we're going to try to address some of the questions that have come in. We've got quite a few questions that have come in between during the presentations as well as during the registration process, we won't be able to answer all of those. But that said, if you have other questions, please continue to send them to the questions pane and we can respond to those after the session is over. I think we'll just jump in with a question that I think we will direct toward Ghana, and that was, do all three trade agreements cover aquaculture? Ghana, are you able to answer that? Thank you, Ben. Yes, and thanks for the question. So all three trade agreements cover goods and aquaculture is part of goods, and many of free trade agreements, as it has already been mentioned today, they have tariff reductions or tariff eliminations for these specific fish and seafood products. So if you are interested in a specific free trade agreement, please do reach out to me or to my colleague, Ben, and we'll be happy to have a look and to see what are the provisions under a specific free trade agreement for aquaculture if you are interested. Thank you. Thank you, Ghana. The next question I think we will pose to Stanley and the question is, what is the landscape like between Israel and the rest of the Middle East? If I am to set up a business branch in Israel, is it possible to freely ship products into the rest of the Middle East? Stanley, are you able to speak to that at all? I'll take a quick shot at what you've seen in the last, I'd say, 12 months. So there's a general theme that there is a big interest between the Arab countries to do business with Israel. It's been happening in the past less in the news, but it is definitely Israel has been invited to export and buy and of course accepted. So I would assume that the movement of goods and services will be fine and continue to grow in great lengths, I would imagine, in the next few months and years. In fact, we went from zero flights from Dubai to Tel Aviv less than a couple of months ago. Now we have tens of them a day. So I think you'll be fine, but you can certainly reach back and we'll go check on a few things for you. Okay, thank you very much, Stanley. I think I'll just stick with you here and see if you have anything to say on any regulations related to dietary supplements like probiotics and medicinal herbs to Israel. And I realize that this may be something that you want to discuss with any of your colleagues. But if you have anything to say on that at this point? Yeah, basically all that stuff is regulated and the information is readily available. It's just a thumbnail note and my colleague Vanessa, she's on the line here actually. But if you send me a note, we'll get back to you with any specific question. Well, mainly Israel follows what the FDA does and European regulatory systems. It's very consistent, so easy to find, but send us a specific questions and we'll be happy to answer. Okay, great, Stanley. And would that also be anyone with questions on labeling requirements? Could they do the same thing? Absolutely. So labeling again, there are specific labels for Israel and the new policies are coming out. And then the last year there's been some changes and nothing too complicated to what we do in North America. So it should not be a problem with all the same. Give us a shout and we'll send you the latest on what that is. Terrific, thank you. This next question is for Wei. With regards to Eureka, how many calls per year to apply are there or is there just one call per year for applications? Are you able to jump in there? It looks like you're unmuted, Wei. Yes, here. Can you hear me? Yes. This is the first call for proposal under Eureka between Canada and Israel. And there is no formal agreement regarding the future calls. But we believe there would be future calls for proposal next year, maybe around at the same time next year. Great, thank you. The next question is on whether or not sweets and confectionery have to be kosher to export to Israel. Stanley, are you able to speak of that? Yep. So generally speaking, there is very little strict kosher requirements for import and export. But I should note that because it is a country that keeps kosher a lot, you're probably likely to hit limits on what you import based on what the consumer will buy. So again, send us your question and your specific product and we'll check it out. I know that there are lots of places where it doesn't matter. And then equally, there are a lot of the big supermarket chains just to keep life simple. Based on competing consumer demand, we'll tend to buy kosher stuff. Excellent. Thank you very much. I'm going to just suggest that we follow up on the remainder of the questions. As I said, there have been quite a few that came in today as well as during registration. I know we're well over time here, so I'd like to let everyone get back to their days. Thank you, Consul General and Stanley and Oded and Amir and Wei and Ghana and everyone for attending today's webinar. Once again, I apologize for the technical issues that we all experience. If you have any other questions, please contact us at the contact details that you could see in our presentations. You will receive a follow-up email with a link to view a recording of today's webinar assuming that the technical issues have not damaged that. But also PDF files of the presentations along with a survey and we would really appreciate it if you can complete that survey and provide your feedback. On behalf of the DC government and all of our speakers, thank you for joining us today and have a great rest of your day.


kusitumiki kiki kaia kakei dobo. Kupiki kiku ni misting ni majunu za mafutuniki, kwa kwa mafutuniki… kwa busi kengu,</i0q, kwa kwenade kwenade kwenade. Kulbale kwenade, kwenade kwenade, kwenade kwenade. kwenade kwenade 2 kwa kwenade, kwenade 1 kwenade kwenade. kwenade kwenade 5 kwenade. Hwia nstana nuha kwenade kwenade. Toa kwa zemia. If you had a contract with your employer and it is two years contract or you had a contract with your employer and it is five years contract and you do not wish to continue with that employer yes before your contract finishes let's say two months to finish you can give a notice period that I'm not wishing or I'm not willing to end you to to continue with you so I need to go in that case then if you get an offer later from another company that is willing to give you the job or give you the amount of salary that you wish to yes you can notify your employer to ask for NOC in case this does not give you the NOC yes you have the right to go and apply to the ministry directly how do you do it you come down in my prescription I'll tell you how to go and apply to the ministry directly remember your contract is finishing or your contract has finished that you sign with your employer so the ministry will allow you to change the jobs they will allow you to change most of you most of people have gone through it and have done it and have people have changed jobs once their contract is done the only problem is that once your contract gets expired or finishes your two years finishes you add more months to contract and this this employer renews your permit or renews your kataidi then it will be a problem you will tend that if you tend to put a lot of halos absconning you or letting you not go with that kind of regards but if you take the right procedure you give the notice period you finish up your contract you can apply directly to the ministry you don't even need to let your employer know apply directly to the ministry once you get that notification message or you get that message with you then your employer has no right to abscon or has no right to prevent you from changing that job however where the problem may be is notifying your employer first before you know you go to apply the ministry he will he will do what you call he will definitely put a follow up search of case against you in metrash meaning that is you are running away or what you call a runaway case against you which may not turn out to be very cold hope i've given you a tip


Aloha and welcome to the Hawaii Smooth Jazz Connection. I am your host, Gwendolyn Harris. My guest today is an accomplished recording artist, producer and live performer who is also known as the Soul Trumpeter with six solo projects, 12 chart-topping Billboard singles including his Billboard number one hit, Past the Groove, and numerous collaborations with some of the industry's top R&B contemporary jazz artists to his credit. He is poised to be one of the most renowned artists of his generation. I am excited to be interviewing him today. Let's welcome Mr. Lynn Rountree to the show. Aloha, how are you? Aloha, thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you.  I was supposed to be there with my friend. I got sick, couldn't make it, and she's blasting all this live footage and you playing in the four year by the pool and all, I'm like, oh my gosh. I just was like, ah, she was just making me mad.  Now, who or what inspired you to play music? Well, I was inspired by my parents. They had, there was always music going in the house, a lot of old soul R&B and gospel. But in terms of playing, my father played the cornet in high school and he did the Jedi mind trick on me with the cornet. He put the cornet that he played in high school. He had since stopped playing and switched to the guitar only for fun. And I used to wake up in the morning with him playing his guitar, but I was never really interested in that guitar. I was interested in watching him play, but I was just in that cornet. The cornet sat on our mantelpiece in the family room. My dad said, look, you can touch anything in this family room. This is your house. Our house. The only thing you can't touch is that trumpet on the mantelpiece. And of course, that's the one thing that I always wanted to touch. He set it up to set a trap for me to see if I'd actually moved it, but when you put a pin on it and one day I just got so intrigued with it, I said, he won't mind if I just touch it. I had to look at it. So I grabbed it off the mantelpiece. That even my dad said, you touched the trumpet, huh? I said, I'm sorry, dad. He said, well, now you got to play it. So then I had to go to school. I had to rent a horn and I had to start taking music classes, but I loved it. I loved it when I started playing it. Really? Do you play any other instruments besides the trumpet? Not live, but I am a producer, so I've learned how to play chords on a keyboard. Obviously, I can play a lot of brass instruments, the three valve brass instruments are the same pretty much fingerings. So any tuba or a telephone or anything like that. But I primarily play live the trumpet and the flugelhorn. Okay. Now, you attended and graduated from Duke Ellington School for Performing Arts. And then from there, you went to an HBCU, Historical Black College. One of the best, and I won't say I say one of the best because the one that I went to is the best, but you went to one of the best Florida A&M, FAMU, where you were a part of the Marching 100, which is one of the best marching bands out there. Out there. I will give you that. I will give you that because I was in the marching band at Hampton University. What was your experience like at Florida A&M and in the marching band? Well, in the best marching band in the land at Florida University, one of the best colleges in the land. But the best marching band in the country, I had so many great experiences. I met so many great people. It was a challenge to come in and be able to continue to play at a high level as well as perform in all that heat down there in Florida and do the routines that we had to do. But it wasn't just showmanship, it wasn't just high stepping and you imagine you get down there in August to camp and it's 800 degrees. And you're having to learn how to march on an old, wet patch, we call it the patch. But also you had to play. We were sticklers for being able to perform and play and play musically. So as much as we performed, as much as we practiced our formations and our technique is as much as we had to know the music and we had to know how to play the music and how to combine the two. So it was just, I learned a lot there. I learned how to, and I always say I learned how to prepare, practice and perform. Emphasis on preparing and practicing because that's the only way you'll be able to perform. And I take a lot of that with me today. As you see me on the bandstand, a lot of trumpet players don't move as much as I do. I end up moving a lot. And it's because of the training and the performance that I learned at Florida A&M. I know what you're saying about that marching because I had to learn. I had to learn going from regular band and then going there and then it's a lot of discipline involved. A lot. It's almost like taking another college course actually, but it's a lot of discipline. Absolutely.  You were expected to know the music, not just be out there blowing. And then we used to do the thing called shake the tree. I don't know if you guys did it, but this is what the best bands did when we were performing. But before the day before our performance, the determined whether or not you got to put on that uniform because not everybody made it that Saturday to put on the uniform. We needed a lot of people to bring up our doc ladder and a lot of people to set up the things on the field. So a lot of those people were people that didn't necessarily live up to the task that week. And what we had to do is we used to call shake the tree where you would perform. So there would be one or two trumpet players and one flute player, one saxophone player, one trombone, trombone, and we'd all have to play our parts and do the entire lap time routine in front of the entire band while the band sat on the bleacher. You had to do that.  You just put your head, no one had to tell you, look, you didn't make it.  But yeah, it was a very, very intimidating process. And again, this isn't prepared me to do what I do now when I'm playing for thousands of people and they're all looking at me and expecting me to be Lynn Roundtree. I always reflect back to those days because if I could do that, then playing in front of all of these people who actually love me isn't a problem at all. Now once you graduated from FAMU, how did you get into the music industry? What was your start? Well, it was interesting because Florida Indian University, as you know, has a great business program. And so I went down there and graduated from the School of Business and Industry with Bachelor of Science. And I went to pursue that when I graduated. I put the trumpet down about six months and started a career in pharmaceutical sales, legal pharmaceutical sales. Yeah, but a friend of mine was getting married and he knew that I had played the trumpet. And so he said, hey, man, you know, I need some music in my wedding and, you know, I know you play the trumpet and, you know, can you do some music for me?  I was like, OK, you know, I got three months to get my chops together and find a keyboard player and, you know, we can go in there and play some real book songs for them. And that's exactly what we did. We practiced a couple of times a week, got our songs together and played for the wedding. We made $50 a piece.  And so that's what I did. I picked it up and I started getting a lot of jam sessions and just learning from a lot of the cats. I was in Milwaukee at the time and then I ended up moving over to Detroit. And fortunately, I was at the tail end of a lot of our legends were still around who are since gone now. But it was a tail end of their their the twilight of their careers. And I was able to go in and sit in jam sessions and learn from a lot of legendary Motown artists or Motown back backup musicians who actually played on Motown. So very rich in and tutelage opportunities for me when I first got got here to Detroit. And, you know, I then ventured out to try and start a band. And people weren't hiring trumpet players aside. Men, you know, you usually look towards saxophone players or guitar players aside, men. People think more trumpet players, more, you know, horn section work.  So no, I wanted to be a soloist. So in order to be a soloist, I realized I had to start my own band. And so that's what I did. And that's where that Florida and them business degree came in handy. Being able to set up my band, set up my operations, set up a budget for the band and, you know, secure rental space and start to secure some gigs around town is what I did. And that's that's what started me, particularly in the music business. And, you know, I formed a group called Up Close. I got a person who could sing a lot better than I could play. And we started covering Jill Scott and covering some of the popular music of today. I started to listen to what was popular and and play what was popular. And I started to make a mark in Detroit with Up Close. My band. Nice. Nice. Now you have six solo CDs. Two thousand five, you came out with Groove Tree. Two thousand and eight, Something Good. Two thousand and ten, Soul Tree, The Soul Jazz Experience. Two thousand thirteen, Serendipitous. Two thousand fifteen, Soul Funky and your most recent, your most recent album, which I absolutely love, Stronger Still with that number one on the billboards past past the groove. What in the title of your title? How did you come up with that title, Stronger Still? Well, well, I didn't even when you said I got to the music business, I left out the part where I started recording CDs. And so and this will tie right into the name Stronger Still. So in the clubs, after we finished playing our set, people will come up and ask, you know, hey, do you have a CD? Are we like the way you guys sound? We'd like to, you know, take your home, take take your music home with us. But do you have a CD? So I said, well, well, no. But with the business mind that I had, I said, maybe I should make a CD. That's a couple extra dollars after the gig, you know? So I have to go on a quick break, Lin, and we're going to come right back. OK, we'll finish that conversation. We'll be right back. We'll be right back with the soul trumpeter, Lin Rountry. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Cynthia Sinclair and I'm Tim Apachella. We are hosts here at Think Tech, Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Aloha and welcome back to the Hawaii Smooth Jazz Connection. We are interviewing today Mr. Lin Rountry, Lin, now let's get back to what we were talking about. We were talking about your last CD, Stronger Still, and you were telling us how you came about with that title. So after my gigs, people will come up and ask if I had a CD and I thought, well, if I make a CD, then that's a little extra money for me at the end of the gigs. And so I set forth to make a CD and I had some songs in mind. I had written some songs down and tried to bang some things out. And I had a little QI 100 recorder that I could put some ideas, a sequencer that I could put some ideas down. And I put some songs together, took them to some producers, Billy Meadows and Dana Davis, who were some very, very well respected producers in the area who listen to some of my stuff and they heard where I was going with it, certainly didn't sound high quality, but they heard the vibe and the groove and they said, well, let's work with you. Can we rework some of these songs and produce some of these songs for us? I said, well, absolutely, because I don't know anything about it. And they did and out came Groove Tree. The first single was a song recorded that featured Mr. Tim Bowman, who at the time was one of the hottest smooth jazz artists in the country. And he lived here and was just gracious enough to lend his expertise on that song. And because he was hot, other programmers started to open up that single that we pushed to radio. And they said, what's this other song by Tim Bowman? But he's a trumpet player. Who's his trumpet player? Is it Rick Braun? Is it is it Boaty? It's, you know, we like this stuff. And and that gave me the credibility. Tim gave me the credibility to have them open the CD. But when they listened to it, what we had done was actually actually magical. And we hadn't even known what we had done with that first CD. Everybody loved it. And that really launched me into the national school jazz scene that I knew nothing about. And so, you know, because I wasn't a smooth jazz artist, a quintessential smooth jazz artist, I'd have the path of the smooth. I was an R&B guy. Well, I'm still an R&B guy. I'm always an R&B guy. But, you know, it jettisoned me into the smooth jazz environment. And so afterwards, I started to make CDs and say, OK, what is smooth jazz? How does it sound? Let's make some smooth jazz records. And we made some things here and there. A second album was was was good. It's got some great songs on it. Didn't catch the magic of the first album. Third album when the economy went bad and the record label that we had started kind of kind of dismantled it in, you know, financial issues going on. I put out an independent record called Soul Tree, the Soul Jazz Experience. And it was an R&B album. And it's an album that features about six vocal songs. It was a soul album was really, you know, was in my heart. It was very, very well received. So much so that I was picked up by Tripp and the Rhythm Records, who Petra said, hey, here's a guy out here doing his own thing and making a mark and, you know, had that cover of You Rock My World on the CD. And it was playing on on the charts at that time. And they signed me to a deal and, you know, we put out some songs. That's some great producers and all the while never really, you know, we had some good stuff, but never a number one. Obviously, you want to see your stuff do well. And everything's not always about getting the number one hit on the radio. It's nice to have, but I think I wanted it too much on some of the albums. And at the point where I said, you know what, you know, all the ups and downs in this industry, a lot of people just give up in this industry to have now six albums and be working on the sixth album and still going through all. I mean, you know, we go through a lot personally as musicians and sacrifice a lot with our families and have to sacrifice a lot with our our jobs, our careers.  And you can we will know because if I get this promotion, then I'm not going to do my music.  And there's a lot that ups and downs in this business that can cause you to stop. But all in all, I just said, you know what? If I keep putting one foot in front of the other, making good songs, let me stop worrying about everything and just make what feels good to me. And what I would like to hear, what I'd like to pop in the in the in the deck and hear, I'm not going to worry about any more what anybody says or trying to get me some jazz hits. And I've made it through a lot of the storms. That's a lot of stuff. I know that I have the strength to keep pushing forward and dang it, I'm stronger still for. And that's where the name of the CD came up. And when I put that name on that and the song past the groove came about by a great producer, Michael Browning, who wrote and produced that song and passed that groove over to me because he started to hear my vibe. We started working together on the songs. He passed that groove over to me, said, hey, man, if you can get this, it's yours. I laid some track on it, laid my horn on it. He said, that's it. That's exactly what I hear on that track. He was like, I said, well, yeah, pass that groove on to me. Let's put it on now. Man, stronger still. Nice. That became a one hit. Nice. That's the story of stronger still. Well, that's a good story. You hear, wow, why I named this CD stronger still. Well, I like that back story and thank you. Can we get a little sample for some of our viewers from you? Yeah, well, you know, since we're talking about past the groove. Exactly. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Now, for all of my viewers and listeners, if you do not have Lynn Roundtree's latest album, Stronger Still, go out and get it. You will love it. I guarantee you will love it. Now, I want to talk about because our time is running short, but I want you to talk about your nonprofit that you and your wife have going on. Yeah, my wife and I have a nonprofit or five one C three called LLAM Cares and it was born out of my wife is a professional dancer. She dances primarily liturgical dance, which is a spiritual type dance. And but it's based and rooted in technique. And she saw a need. A lot of a lot of people are popping up with dance groups and dance centers, but they're they're lacking the technique, but not because they lack the the the the want for wanting to have the technique, but because they don't have the resources and our schools don't don't are not allocating as much towards the arts.  And she always tells a story that she was, you know, had could have gone a lot of different ways growing up in the inner city. But dance was her outlet and access to dance was easier when she was growing up. Then it is now with all the technology and everything that we have now. These programs aren't readily available. You have to go out to the suburbs and get them and you have to they're exorbitant costs. So she saw a need based on on on her reality and wanted to provide that that same opportunity for a lot of young kids that that she saw that that making these critical choices in life at that point, it can go either way. And so we started this group or started the foundation to get resources so we can get a lot of these interests of youth. And in fact, we don't have to be inner city, but anybody who wants to dance on opportunity to dance and the resources necessary to to to be able to make it happen. And we do that through a conference as well, a yearly conference called LLAM, two day dance intensive, where we actually we give out scholarships to some of these some of the youth, 50 to 100 scholarships, and we bring in some of the top dancers and dance leaders, instructors from across the country, Alvin Ailey, New York, from Florida, from Texas, and they all come into Detroit for two days. And anybody that that, you know, for registration for you or if you've got a scholarship can take classes with these these world renowned people and they can put it on their resume, but they can learn some technique in these intensive classes. And it's a it's an experience that stays with them. So it's something that we're really happy about and to see the kids faces and to see the after effects of kids going out and starting their own dance companies after the dance programs that they've attended through LLAM Cares. It's just it's just a blessing in and of itself. And and it's why we're here. And so that's why we're doing what we're doing. And we're growing in our seventh year now. And it's it's again, that's getting stronger still, too. So everybody getting a little stronger still. What is the what's the website for that? When it's a website? Yep, www.LLAMdance.org. Awesome. So I like that. E-E-L-O-A-O. What is it? E-L-O-L-A-M dance.org. I'm sorry, I had a brain freeze there. OK, well, I like that because that's usually one of the questions that I'll ask is, like you said, since the music is music and the arts are being taken out of the schools, what can we do to do that? And of course, you and your wife are doing that, which is just amazing. Just amazing. I like that. What do you have coming up? What what concerts do we have coming up? Well, tomorrow I'm back on a plane. I just finished playing the Dallas. I was down in Dallas with my buddy Kirk Willam and Mason and him and Kayla Waters out there. We did a Mother's Day concert for Martini Blue, which was great. It was a great atmosphere. Blessings to all the beautiful mothers out there this weekend. Tomorrow I'm headed off to Birmingham, Alabama to play. Ironically, for my alumni, National Alumni Convention for the inauguration of our new National Alumni President, Florida and the University of National Alumni President. So it's going to be a concert for myself and Kimberley Holloway. It's a great neo-soul vocalist and also my freshman sister out of the band. She lives in L.A. But the week after I'm in San Diego, doing Jazz at the Creek, and then I'm up at Harvelle's in Long Beach. The week after I'm in D.C. for two two dates with myself, James Lloyd, Drew Davidson and Settimo. We're doing a thing called the Jazzy Marble. We're doing two dates at Blues Alley. And then I'm all over the all over the place this summer. Got a nice packed schedule. I'll be in the Nassau Bahamas with the Nassau Jazz Festival. I'll be in Asheville, North Carolina with with Marcus Anderson for his inaugural Jazz and Coffee Escape, which is going to feature some some hot artists. Derby City Jazz Fest, I'm doing Stockton Jazz Fest in California. But you can go to my website and catch up with me. We're always adding more dates and we add them in real time. So hopefully be able to see see see anybody that's watching your show there as well as hopefully being able to get out to Hawaii. So I we're going to work on that one. But to book some book and some land roundtree out there. But it's great, you know, I I thrive off of my fans. I thrive off of the people who enjoy my music because we never know. We write in this music. We never know, you know, how people are going to take it if people want to appreciate it. And, you know, if my music touches people and they let me know it does, it just gives me fuel and gives me life.  Well, unfortunately, our time has come to an end for all of my viewers and listeners. If you want to learn more about Lynn Roundtree, go to www.lynroundtree music dot com. Everything is on there, his schedule, his bio, anything you want to know about Lynn is on there.  He's amazing, working on getting you here to Hawaii for sure. But I thank you, Lynn, so I do or or Facebook, either one. OK, yes, you heard that. Facebook, I G connect connect with him. But thank you so much, Lynn, for being here with us. Tune in next. Wonderful program, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Tune in next week, everyone, when my guests will be Mr. Eric Darius until then, aloha and God bless.