Forty-Ninth Canadian Regional Conference.

• Position: CPA Activities The Canadian Scene - Conference news

The 49th Regional Conference was held in Charlottetown, PEI from July 13-19, 2011. More than eighty federal, provincial, territorial and international delegates attended the conference which was host by Speaker Kathleen Casey of Prince Edward Island. Other Speakers in attendance included George Hickes (Manitoba), Roger Fitzgerald (Newfoundland and Labrador), Bill Barisoff (British Columbia), Dale Graham (New Brunswick), Ken Kowalski (Alberta), Don Toth (Saskatchewan), Steve Peters (Ontario), Gordie Gosse (Nova Scotia), Paul Delorey (Northwest Territories) and Hunter Tootoo (Nunavut).

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Special guests included David Jones, Deputy (Guernsey), Greg Aplin MP (New South Wales), Speaker M.R. Polley (Tasmania), Senator Danny Maharaj (Trinidad and Tobago), John Hyde, MLA (Western Australia), Shakila Abdalla MP (Kenya) and Waruna Bandara Dhammika Dasanayake, Deputy Secretary General of Parliament in Sri Lanka.

The first business session featured a presentation by Preston Manning, President and CEO of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy. His topic was "A Model Parliament for Canada: a national institution for training future parliamentarians and a laboratory for testing parliamentary reforms'.

Fatima Houda-Pepin (Quebec) addressed the topic of "How to give more value to the role of elected members and parliamentary institutions in the face of growing cynicism among citizens'.

The third session focussed on the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and consisted of presentations by Blair Armitage...