The Canadian Cleantech Summit was slated for its second annual meeting between Tuesday and Thursday; last year, the event attracted 240 registrants from across the country.
But as the organizing committee at OCRI ran the numbers this month, it decided to put the conference on ice as of April 18, said chief executive Claude Haw. Registrations were still strong, but below last year's, and the economic development agency wanted to have a higher number of delegates for 2011.
OCRI will put it on again in the fall, he added.
"The timing really sucks," Mr. Haw said of the summit, which coincidentally fell in the same time period as the federal election, announced months after OCRI set the date.
"The main issue for us was a lot of the federal employees are unable to be out and speaking in public at this point in time. It just became clear that we weren’t going to have a wonderful event, and we didn’t want to have an okay event. We wanted to build on the momentum we had last year."
But after informing the speakers, the sponsors and the community, Mr. Haw said he was heartened by their response amid the disappointment; most said they were committed to coming back in a few months.
"We have a pretty good set of speakers and a very solid program, but certainly federal employees are reluctant to be out during an election."
Summit organizers market the conference to clean tech companies across the country looking to network and to learn more about the regulatory environment, as well as market opportunities.
The current version of this year's program posted on the summit's website does not include any federal departments or agencies among speakers.
Last year's summit included a keynote address from Tony Clement, then the minister of industry, who spoke about international business opportunities for Canadian clean tech companies.
Other federal departments represented in speeches last year included Natural Resources Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
