130 Business View - March 2015
think between a strong board, and a strong associa-
tion, and very, very active engagement on the part of
our membership, that we have been able to move for-
ward on so many initiatives. We’re very proud of it.
BUSINESS VIEW: What have been the most suc-
cessful ways that you’ve gotten the membership
involved? Do you have a lot of online stuff? Do you
have publications, a lot of events – what things have
worked the best and got the best response?
JOHNSTON:
Well, another thing that we did a few years
ago was took a look at how our members engaged to
ensure that we were covering all types of members.
For example, we have two road shows that go out an-
nually – one in the spring and one in the fall to five
cities across Ontario. And those road shows are spe-
cifically geared to providing information on mostly leg-
islative items, new regulations, how to introduce best
practices in their homes, so they’re very much geared
to the field level management. And this way, we get
across to our small operators in more remote areas,
we can see them face-to-face, get input, and also de-
liver first-hand information that will be useful to their
operations. And then we also have a joint convention
with the long-term care association, which is the larg-
est of its kind in Canada, annually with a 300-booth
show in Toronto. In that, we are presenting information
to leadership, not only in the sector, but government
as well, and people from across the country, on new
trends in both long-term care and retirement homes.
And then we have another event that is specific just to
the retirement homes sector and our own members
that’s between our commercial membership, because
we do have about 250 commercial members, in addi-
tion to our operators, to allow them to connect on an
intimate basis over the course of a couple of days. And
so, the different venues allow us to meet and connect
with people differently. We have a couple of webinars
that we run every month for our members as well, and
a number of publications including our newsletter and
bulletins that go out whenever anything changes gov-
ernment-wise.
BUSINESS VIEW: Sounds like you have all of the bas-
es covered there between events and publications,
and webinars, and everything else. Talk about the
future, in five years from now – how do things look
differently than they do now? What sorts of things
do you want to make sure you get checked off your
HEALTHCARE
