Pat Fiacco, Mayor of Regina, Canada

Your Excellency Dominique de Villepin, Former Prime Minister of France, Honorable General Christian Emile QUESNOT, respectable Mr. Guo Gengmao, Acting Governor of Henan Province, Mr. Wang Wenchao, Secretary of Zhengzhou Municipal Party Committee, Mr. Zhao Jiancai, Mayor of Zhengzhou, and dear Chinese leaders, guests, ladies and gentlement,

First of all, my thanks go to Asia-Pacific CEO Association, International Outsourcing Center, Henan Provincial Government and Zhengzhou Municipal Government for inviting me to participate in this Summit. Then, on behalf of all the Canadians, I'd like to offer congratulations on the success of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and I also hope that the 2010 Winter Olympics in Canada will be a success.

I want to firstly talk about my city, Regina, and the opportunities it can offer to you.  Regina, capital of Saskatchewan, covers an area of more than 118 sq kms with a population of 200,000. Covering an area of 610 thousand sq kms, our privince is sparcely populated but endowed with abundant resources. There is an important oil production base in Regina and the farming land in Regina accounts for 40% of the total in Canada. Therefore, we are rich in resources.

You can see that Regina is full of business opportunities. Regina is the sunniest capital city in Canada and the average temperature is about 20 degrees Celsius. At the same, our economy also benefits from the iron and steel manufacturing industry, information industry, energy, and environment as well as a number of emerging industries. Besides, environmental technologies also boost the development of logistics and relevant industries. We are striving to become a central hub of transportation and our city boasts the the most convenient transportation in North America. Meanwhile, we are also endeavoring to cooperate with some of the Canadian associations and departments to bring our role into full play.

At present, we are conducting more infrastructure projects, such as the international airport and Canada's highway system. Our southern part is adjacent to the United States and we are making great efforts to develop greenbelts beside the airport. Also, our provincial government is cooperating with our Municipal Government and the Central Government of Canada to develop more infrastructure projects including the establishment of a number of multiple-functional buildings and the construction of a lot of highways which will make transportation more convenient. The reason why we are building more highways, multi-functional buildings, beltways and also clusters as well as some industrial parks is that we hope to attract more multinational companies, so that they can produce, assemble and make final combinations of products in our city and thus make our city a perfect place. We hope that all the companies can see we are capable of providing a wide range of services and also enjoy a lot of opportunities to start businesses. What's more, the construction of the modern infrastructure framework also produces a lot of businesses.

Creating more business opportunities is one of the efforts we have always been making. In fact, the Labu  food-processing plant of Canada is also bulding a multi-functional manufacturing base which will be completed by 2017 and will employ 70,000 workers in two years. What's more, I'd also like to talk about how to make use of the existing infrastructure and how to plan our land in the center of our city in particular so as to improve our efficiency in the use of land. The operation and development of these commodities and business will certainly provide more employment opportunities and help us attract more capital investment, so we can offer more opportunities. We also hope to see that these more business opportunities will push forward the development of our city in the future.

As just mentioned, everything is possible in our city. Finally, I'd love to express my thanks again for the invitation and I'm really pleased to make a speech in this Summit. 

Thank you!