Irenka Farmilo

Irenka is expert at building consensus among a diverse range of interests. As Director of Issues, Industry Relations and Corporate Affairs at the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC), Irenka was responsible for addressing stakeholder concerns -often quite divergent- on a vast number of communications and policy issues.

Irenka has addressed issues as varied as air transport, motor coaches, bus driver hours of service, border crossings, GST visitor rebates, the Marine Liability Act and its complex insurance issues, quality assurance and standards in the international arena, financing, risk management and insurance for the adventure tourism sector.

Ms. Farmilo is therefore thoroughly familiar with the tourism sector. She has often met personally with stakeholders, has organized and, at times personally, made presentations, given speeches as the CTC's representative speaking on tourism partnerships, governance (of Crown corporations), and issues management. She has facilitated managed discussions with stakeholders (addressing, for example, barriers to Canadian tourism prosperity), and/or has worked closely with other tourism organizations with similar goals and interests (the Canadian Tourism Human Resource Council, for example). As the responsibility for issues under discussion often belonged to a government agency, Ms. Farmilo has considerable experience in putting forward concerns, identifying pertinent issues, recommending resolutions, and negotiating resolutions, much of which involved conflict resolution.