Today, the Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade, attended a virtual ceremony for the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade’s inaugural Business Reinvention Awards, where she presented the day’s biggest award and namesake, the Reinvention Award, to Novo Textiles.

Run by the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade’s Scale-up Centre for SMEs, the Reinvention Awards recognize and celebrate innovative businesses and organizations that have reinvented, adapted and shown exceptional resilience in the face of challenge and barriers, with this year’s awards acknowledging the incredible difficulty of 2020.

Awards were also given for excellence in collaboration, workplace health, environmental leadership, domestic growth and export planning to businesses in the Greater Vancouver area and region.

The World Trade Centre Vancouver presented the Trade Accelerator Program (TAP) Export Plan of the Year award. TAP provides companies with the knowledge, resources and coaching they need to develop and execute successful export plans and grow internationally.

The Government of Canada continues to support small and local businesses through programs such as the newly expanded Canada Emergency Business Account, the new Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy, the extended Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy and the new Highly Affected Sectors Credit Availability Program so they are able to get through—and recover from—this pandemic and build success for months and years to come.

“Celebrating the innovation and resilience of our businesses is more important than ever, recognizing the historically challenging circumstances presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. I sincerely congratulate all the winners of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade’s Business Reinvention Awards and look forward to following their future successes. It’s thanks to this kind of business excellence—in B.C. and across Canada—that we will build back a better future for us all.”
– The Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade