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John Thomson  

Here and there

The Canyon Desert Resort will include the 125-suite Canyon Desert Inn -- a full-service hotel with conference facilities, spa, restaurant and wine bar. It will also design culinary programs for residents.

Plans are already underway to create the Okanagan Valley's first wine cave within the hotel complex, complete with a British Columbia Wine Interpretive Centre. It is intended to be a starting point for exploring world-class wineries nearby, such as La Stella Vineyard, Burrowing Owl, and Osoyoos Band's NK'MIP winery at Spirit Ridge in Osoyoos, located within a 15-minute drive of the property.

Bellstar's partnership with the Osoyoos Indian Band has allocates from all over the world for their Osoyoos-based property Spirit Ridge Vineyard Resort and Spa.

Canyon Desert Resort plans to continue this legacy with a second partnership, complemented by Watermark Asset Management, of Watermark in Osoyoos. The team's combined experience ensures this resort community will draw further attention to the south Okanagan, adding solid value to all investment in the region.

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A new study released by enviro-marketing company TerraChoice says that more than 95% of consumer products claiming to be green commit at least one sin of greenwashing.

The report, called The Sins of Greenwashing: Home and Family Edition, highlighted (you guessed it) seven deadly greenwashing sins–described as "the act of misleading consumers about the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service." They include "Hidden trade-off," where the green claim is achieved with a unreasonably narrow set of attributes - "No proof," where claims are made that cannot be substantiated, and "vagueness," when a green claim is so broad or poorly defined that its true meaning is easily misunderstood by consumers.

"No Proof" was the most persistent of all the sins in 2010, with the majority of tested products falling into this category. It's a sin that's been on the rise since 2007 when the study was launched.

But it's not all bad news. The study reported that the percentage of products completely void of greenwashing has increased to 4.5% this year from 2% in 2009.

That increase comes as the number of "greener" products on the market was up 73% over 2009.

TerraChoice also found the proportion of "sin-free" products is five times greater in "mature" categories such as building, construction and office products than in "immature" categories such as toys and baby products. In the latter category, 100% of toys and 99.2% of baby products surveyed were guilty of some form of greenwashing.

The study also found that big box retailers stock more products that provide legitimate environmental certifications than smaller "green" boutique-style stores.

This year, TerraChoice examined 5,296 products making environmental claims, and the company visited 19 retail stores in Canada and 15 in the United States.

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QHR Technologies Inc. a Kelowna based leading Canadian Healthcare technology provider announces that its EMR division, Optimed Software in the first ten months of 2010 has already completed a record number of Electronic Medical Record (“EMR”) software installations for 500 physicians, adding to our year over year increase in recurring revenues, and supporting important federal and provincial objectives for EMR adoption across Canada.

In the race to move Canadian physicians from paper based patient charts to electronic medical records, Optimed Software has positioned itself as a market leader implementing their flagship software, Accuro® EMR into an additional 500 physicians’ daily work flow so far in 2010. Optimed now supports more than 3,500 physicians.

“When we look at our 500 new Canadian physicians on Accuro® EMR this year, we have won on many levels in 5 different provinces,” said Al Hildebrandt, CEO of QHR and President of Optimed Software. “There are three key areas where we have succeeded firstly, by increasing EMR adoption by new physicians moving from paper based systems secondly, by creating market consolidation by moving physicians previously using other vendors’ EMRs and finally by transferring patient data from their previous EMR to Accuro® EMR” said Hildebrandt.


More John Thomson articles

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About the Author

John Thomson is the Okanagan's pre-eminent business columnist writing his column, Rumours and Things, for over 24 years. Plugged in to the valley's who's who, John keeps his readers coming back for more with his straight talk and optimistic perspective on where we are headed next.

When John is not writing his column, he runs a sixteen year old think tank called the Executive Roundtable and holds his popular "Thomson Presents" quarterly business speaker seminars.

Have a comment, question, or tip for John? 

E-mail John at
[email protected]
or send him a fax at 250-764-8255.

 



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The views expressed are strictly those of the author and not necessarily those of Castanet. Castanet does not warrant the contents.

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