President’s Report:      Sherwood Park – Fort Saskatchewan Conservative Association AGM  11 February, 2017 

2016 was the first non-campaign year for Sherwood Park – Fort Saskatchewan Conservative Association.

With Garnett’s oversight and participation, 15 new and returning Board members were elected at last year’s AGM, reappointing and electing new executive.

1. First activity undertaken in combination with last year’s AGM was the beginning of the identification of Delegates to attend the Conservative National convention.
2. The Board’s Policy and Constitution Committee led by Lee Funke, tackled the final timely reviews, ratification, and responses of our Association’s prioritization of new and amended resolutions in February
3. Sue Timanson, VP Events, then helped solicit and organize volunteers for the trade shows in Sherwood Park and Fort Saskatchewan held late April and early May.
4. The National Convention in Vancouver at the end of May was attended by Association Delegates made up of a combination of Board and Association members, including previous MP Ken Epp, who joined Garnett in a very active and robustly debated round of sessions and final voting.
5. Garnett was actively supported by numerous members attending each of the Sherwood Park and Fort Saskatchewan Canada day parades.
6. August saw a great turn out at the Northern Alberta Annual BBQ held in south Edmonton with keynote speaker Rona Ambrose.
7. Volunteers again supported Garnett’s riding BBQ held 6 Sep in conjunction with the Alberta caucus meeting held in Fort Saskatchewan.
8. 7 Sep and first out the gate in the leadership selection process, the Association sponsored and hosted the very well attended Leadership Forum held at Festival Place, including an advance mixer with the then developing candidate slate.
9. This was followed in October by the Pan Alberta Meeting held in Lacombe Alberta, covering numerous topics from youth engagement, association success metrics, and review of the upcoming leadership ranked voting process to name a few topics.
10. Similar to various associations, we adopted a new multi-use information platform in late fall. We are commencing renewal and development of an active web-site, communications, petitions, fundraising, events, and interactive membership platform. More of this to see and engage with over the coming weeks and months.
11. Most recently was the participation of 5 Board members at the Conservative Party sponsored Leadership training session held 21 January in Calgary offering further communications, fundraising, and campaign related topics.

Having established the core leadership and quickly evolving key roles for Finance, Events, Policy and Constitution, Communications and Activism, and Membership, the upcoming challenges are to further develop our active Fundraising, Volunteer, Election Readiness, and Youth areas so that as we enter 2018, the Sherwood Park – Fort Saskatchewan Conservative Association has a robust and engaged ramp supporting Garnett Genuis in a successful campaign in 2020.

Of particular note will be for all members actively engaging in the selection process of our new Party leader and we expect the next Prime Minister of Canada.

Thank you to Garnett for his continuing engagement with the Association. Thank you for the leadership provided by our Board, Executive and committee chairs.  Most importantly, thank you to our members for your time, donations and commitments throughout this last year.