It was an early start this morning – so much so that I didn't make the shuttle to the convention centre since I slept in and got out of my room in the middle of a 40-minute gap in the shuttle schedule. Actually, I did make the shuttle – the organisers impressed me again by their round-the-clock shuttle service in the morning so I didn't need to venture into the brave cold world.

I sat down at my table and introduced myself to my tablemates: a student studying nursing in Saskatoon and a couple nice girls from Estevan, along with a lady from SGI working her their booth here. There was quite the spread of booths outside in the lobby. Just before we get started who sits down at our table (of 7)? Glenn Hagel, the Minister of Culture, Youth, & Recreation! The lights go down for the presentation and who else sits down at the table, but Warren McCall, the Minister of Corrections and Public Safety! I couldn't ask for more access to the current (and soon to be former! And then current again, since that's the way this ridiculous country works!) powers-that-be. We didn't get a chance to talk, though.

We watched a short “rah-rah” video about how awesome it is to live here before our host got things started. Our host for the event is Kaveri Bittara, who is a Saskatoon-based, hot young journalist on the CBC, or at least that's what they tell me, since I don't watch CBC News on TV (sorry, but give me Angel Sombrutzki anyday, although I do have a fondness for brown girls!). She kicked off the event with a brief introduction and then launched right into her own version of the "rah rah Saskatchewan" spiel, filled with the same wonderful facts in the brochure that was part of the registration package.

The first speech of the day was from the Premier. He told his usual jokes about Saskatchewan being the hardest province to spell but the easiest to draw, and then went about welcoming us in great detail. He said we were a part of history - "the most representative group that has come together in the history of this province". Told us the room was filled with over 160 sponsors, political leaders, leaders from the trade union movement – leaders from all political, economic, and educational realms in our province. He said their job was to “duct tape” their mouths – that this was their time to listen. He also highlighted the over 475 applicants in the room between 19 and 30 that "almost precisely represent the demographic of our province" by self-application, without any engineering of the numbers or selection process. That's interesting, but I know that the representative population was a goal of the organisers and they did a significant amount of outreach to ensure that representation. As I mentioned before, they also paid expenses for those travelling to make sure they could come. In the middle of his quips, he described the Province as “so flat we can see the future coming”. I would venture to say that it's so flat you can see a lot of things, like people leaving, but I digress. He also spoke about the fact that we have "more opportunities than we have people" and that "our future is wide open". Blatant political propaganda subsidized by the people of Saskatchewan aside, I don't mean to make it look like I don't agree with everything that he's said. We're in an unprecedented time of opportunity in this province – it's just that I think we are succeeding in spite of the policies of the NDP, not because of it. He spent a good deal of his speech talking about Saskatchewan in the context of the recent leader's trip to Calgary to advertise the province and a lot of the statistics and "facts" presented in his speech were obviously one-sided, but getting us pumped up about Saskatchewan is not a bad thing.

Next up was Don Atchinson, the mayor of Saskatoon. He had a lot of cool information about the stuff happening in Saskatoon. He declared the city as "Canada's Science City". One thing I wasn't aware of was that the Synchrotron was completed on-time and on-budget – a testament to the engineering professionals in this province and the country, if I do say so myself. I took a few key things away from his speech. The first was his reference to "balanced growth". I think this is very true – the incredible boom happening in Alberta is fundamentally unsustainable. The full-speed-ahead growth there in "boom" times will have serious repercussions for that province during the inevitable "bust" times. The second thing I took away from his speech was a very unique thing I had never heard before: the mayor talked about how we Saskatchewan people now have a large network of relatives and friends across the country and the world, and that we should take advantage of those networks to our benefit. Let me get this straight – now the incredible amount of people who have left this province are an advantage? That's one amazing way to take a "silver lining" approach, if I do say so myself.

The next speeches were from the Co-Chairs of the Sask. Labour Market Commission (a group of people from business, labour, and training institutions), Holly Hetherington and Larry Hubich. It was interesting to see both the labour movement and business coming together to speak about the value of this summit.

We had two youth speakers in the morning. The first was Chris Richards, a Masters Engineering student passionate about the environment and human development and poverty. He volunteers with a group called Engineers Without Borders. He had the most powerful message of the speakers so far. He showed a moving graph illustrating the GDP and life-expectancy rates of all the countries in the world over time from 1960 to 2001, and highlighted in a very visual way the differences between a great country like Canada and a country that has been challenged (and who's score on both counts has dropped) like Botswana. I honestly heard gasps from the crowd about the level of poverty they suffer from – lots of "woah!" exclamations were to be heard. He was not only a great speaker, but also thanked the sponsors and the taxpayers for putting this on, which was great. The second speaker was an artist, Bevin Bradley, talking about the community and youth outreach happening in the province through groups she has been a part of, like the Saskatoon Community Youth Art Project.

We were supposed to participate in an activity called “Walking in my Shoes”, but it was cancelled due to time, so we got a condensed overview of the activities of the day given by Susan Jarvis and Christina Phipps (sp on both?):

• 5 topics: Come up with ideas of what will get us closer to making Saskatchewan More youth friendly
  • solutions not issue identification
• Select one as a priority recommendation
• 6 stakeholders – youth, government, business, labour, educational institutions, cities
• 10 ideas back to you at the end of the day

Quote of the day: "Sorry, I just spit on the Premier" - Susan Jarvis

All in all, even though it might not sound like it, it's been a pretty positive start to the event – I'm pretty pumped about our work today and it's going to be an exciting time.