I already knew Destination Canada’s International Convention Attraction Fund (ICAF) had been renewed. That’s exactly why I went back to Chelsea Pitre at Discover Saskatoon and asked her to sit down with me.
What caught my attention wasn’t the $15 million in renewed federal funding. It was the number underneath it. Forty-eight bids were supported in the first two weeks alone.
That’s not a fund quietly reopening its doors. That’s a fund already under real pressure, which tells you something important about how many destinations across this country are trying to move on this right now.
So the timing felt right to put a spotlight on a destination that already proved what this funding can do when the groundwork is in place first.
Saskatoon just beat Winnipeg, Niagara Falls and Edmonton to win the bid for the IFAMA World Forum. Four to five hundred international delegates. Against three bigger cities with bigger budgets.
Most destinations think ICAF is the starting point, where you apply for the fund and figure out the rest as you go. You can’t do it that way. You need the entire sequence, sector strength, relationships, and legacy thinking already mapped out before the fund becomes useful. That’s exactly backwards, and it’s a pattern I’ve seen firsthand working with destinations building their event strategy from the ground up. Saskatoon shows why. The fund amplifies what’s already built. It doesn’t build it for you.
Here’s what Chelsea actually did, in the order she described it to me. Five steps. You don’t need Saskatoon’s ten-year head start to begin any of them.
Step one. Find out what you’re actually strong in before anything else.
I asked Chelsea what she’d tell a destination that doesn't have any of these pieces in place yet. Her answer was immediate. Talk to your economic development organization. Talk to your local Chamber of Commerce. For her, that meant the University of Saskatchewan, the Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Association (SREDA), and the local Chamber of Commerce, her own named trifecta for understanding where the intellectual and financial capital in her city actually sits.
Start small. This is one phone call, not a strategy document. One conversation this month with your local econ dev contact, asking a single question. What sectors are we genuinely strong in, whether we’ve marketed them yet or not?
Step two. Build the relationship before you need it.
Saskatoon’s ambassador, Dr. Eric Micheels, wasn’t recruited for this bid. He already had a prior bid history with Discover Saskatoon, work he’d done successfully with them in 2024, and standing ties within IFAMA that went back years before Chelsea ever needed either.
Start small. Identify one person in your community who already has real standing in whatever sector you land on in step one. Start that relationship with no ask attached. The ask comes later, sometimes years later.
Step three. Don’t build from zero twice.
When it came time to design the site experience for IFAMA, they reused the technical farm management tour they’d already built for a previous event. No months lost reinventing something that already worked.
Start small. Audit what you’ve already built for any past bid. Tours, decks, partner lists. Treat it as reusable infrastructure, not a one-time cost.
Step four. Bake legacy in from the start, not as a bolt-on.
This is the part of our conversation that stayed with me longest. When Chelsea found out how much praise the legacy section of her application received from Destination Canada, including the work with academic partners, engagement with the Indigenous community, and programs for the next generation, she was genuinely surprised.
“To me, those are just non-negotiable,” she said. “I guess it’s not so much for everyone else.”
That’s the whole industry problem in one sentence. The thing she assumed was baseline practice is the thing most destinations still treat as a bonus slide, or miss completely.
Start small. Work with your ecosystem to determine what an event in your destination could deliver. Write that paragraph before the bid exists, not after you’ve already won.
Step five. Build a team that catches opportunities when they show up.
Terri and Brad went to Destination Canada’s Innovate Canada already prepared. When they saw Catherine’s name on the attendee list, they knew exactly who she was and exactly why it mattered, because the groundwork had already been laid before they ever walked into that room.
Start small. This step only works because steps one through four already happened. Preparedness isn’t a personality trait. It’s what exists when the work comes first, and the opportunity finds it already built.
Saskatoon didn’t win because they had a bigger booth or a louder pitch. They won because sector focus, a relationship with real standing, reusable infrastructure, legacy thinking, and a prepared team all quietly stacked on top of each other until three bigger cities couldn’t compete with it.
The fund didn’t build any of that. It just recognized it when it saw it.
If you’re a mid-sized destination looking at ICAF and wondering where to start, don’t start with the application.
Start with step one.
***
The full conversation with Chelsea Pitre, including how the ambassador program came together and what surprised her about this whole process, is linked below.
This is such a great piece and 101 of intentional bidding for global association meetings. Hats off to Saskatoon.