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Results: 1 - 15 of 1201
Arlene Strom
View Arlene Strom Profile
Arlene Strom
2015-06-18 8:57
Thank you very much.
Thank you for the opportunity to represent Suncor today. Although I'm sure you're familiar with Suncor, I thought I'd start with just a brief summary of our company.
We're Canada's leading integrated energy company. We employ about 13,000 Canadians. We work from coast to coast. We also work closely and have business relationships with about 150 first nations and aboriginal communities across Canada. Our operations include, of course, our oil sands development and upgrading in northern Alberta, as well as conventional and offshore oil and gas production. We own and operate refineries in Edmonton, Sarnia, and Montreal. We also have a lubricants plant in Mississauga. We're active in renewable energy. We have interests in seven wind farms, and in Sarnia we operate the largest ethanol facility in Canada. Of course, many Canadians know us from our gas stations. We have almost 1,500 Petro-Canada stations across Canada.
We're guided in our operations by our vision. We seek to be trusted stewards of valuable natural resources. It's core to our business. We're guided by our vision of sustainability. We seek economic prosperity, social well-being, and a healthy environment for today and tomorrow.
We have a long history, of course, in the oil sands. We've been a pioneer there. The nature of that business has called for not just economic investment but real social innovation and investment in our environment over the years. I think our success is really rooted, though, in our topic today—collaboration and partnerships in the communities where we operate. We all know about the complex environment we're operating in today. It's increasingly polarized. With increasing concern over infrastructure, and concern about climate change and our relationship with indigenous communities, I think the imperative for collaboration and developing partnerships becomes even more important.
I can't talk about collaboration without mentioning Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance. This is where we came together as a founding member several years ago with 13 other oil and gas companies to work together on improving environmental performance. We felt it was too important to compete in this area. We're very proud today that we have already shared $1 billion worth of intellectual property, best practices, and technologies. In fact, 750 technologies have already been shared. We're working hard on tailings, water, land, and GHG, and improving performance in those areas.
I thought I'd give a few examples of some of our collaborative partnerships in the environment. One in Alberta that we're just starting, really, is with The Natural Step and Energy Futures Lab in Alberta. It's convened by Natural Step, but together with the Pembina Institute, the Banff Centre, and Suncor Energy Foundation, we are bringing together a diverse group of individuals from academia, from government, from industry, and from the environment, and some of the young leaders in Alberta to talk about what kind of energy future we want in Alberta and to think about the policy implications and the implications for the very social fabric of our communities.
We are also a sponsor of Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, which brought together economists from across the country, together with an advisory council with a broad spectrum of people from different political associations, academia, business, and environment to align on Canada's economic and environmental aspirations.
We've also had long-time partnerships with folks like the Pembina Institute. We have worked together with them on water, land, GHG issues, offset issues, and many different issues over the years.
Going back to 2003, we're a founding member of the Boreal Leadership Council. We're proud of the work we've done there. It's been a collaboration with first nations, resource companies, financial institutions, and leading conservation groups. We're a signatory to the boreal forest conservation framework, which calls for the establishment of a network of large interconnected protected areas covering about half of the country's boreal forest.
Together with that partnership, we've worked with the Alberta Conservation Association. Since 2003 we have worked to set aside and protect about 3,200 hectares in Alberta's boreal forest. We've committed $4 million to that conservation effort over the years.
I also want to mention just a few of our other collaborative organizations, where we're active in communities. One is the Oil Sands Community Alliance, which is focused on socio-economic impacts in northern Alberta. We've also been actively involved in Social Prosperity Wood Buffalo, which helps to build capacity in the non-profit sector.
We've partnered with other companies and first nations communities in the Fort Chipewyan and Janvier communities on the sustainable communities initiative. There, we're working with youth in those communities to explore safe, healthy, and sustainable communities. A lot of that is around traditional education and helping to empower and build capacity within those youth communities.
We're very proud of the work we've done with aboriginal communities. In 2014 alone, we spent over $450 million with aboriginal businesses, but we engage with many different advisory groups on many different issues. We've actually incorporated feedback from the aboriginal communities into our winter drilling program to help make it more successful and sustainable.
We've also worked with the Tsuu T'ina Nation on a business incubator program. We've been helping to build sustaining business capacity within that community. In fact, recently we celebrated an evening where there were over 72 businesses represented that had worked through that business incubator.
We're also involved in cultural awareness and healing. One of the organizations that we are proud to work with is Reconciliation Canada.
Finally, in our investments in partnerships that create opportunities for aboriginal young people, we're very proud to partner with Indspire. I want to thank the federal government for their recent matching of $10 million. Our CEO Steve Williams co-chaired that fundraising campaign for their Building Brighter Futures effort.
I'll probably leave it there. Our partnerships are foundational to our success, and I welcome the conversation we're about to have. I think our greatest learning over time is that community partnership goes way beyond just the dollar investment. We really believe it's important to come together with government, industry, and community to create those collective purposes and work on achieving those solutions together. I like the African proverb: if you want to go fast, go alone, and if you want to go far, go with others.
Thank you for this opportunity.
View Lawrence Toet Profile
CPC (MB)
Yes, that's good.
I also wanted to talk a little about your business incubator, and the 72 businesses that you had at a recent celebration. I'd like to know a little more about what kind of work you are doing with these, I'm assuming, entrepreneurs, and in what ways you are supporting them. Is it kind of a one-off, or are you actually sticking with them and walking through the process with them?
Can you give us a little better idea of what's happening with your business incubator program?
Arlene Strom
View Arlene Strom Profile
Arlene Strom
2015-06-18 9:55
We've done a couple of business incubator programs. The one with Tsuu T'ina is the one that is active. We've also had one that we did with Fort McKay. The business incubator programs are not, I think, generally to be in place forever, so our goal is to be a bit like scaffolding so that we can come in and help to build capacity, develop the skills and knowledge, and give support around business processes so that folks with creativity, skills, passion, and a business plan can get going.
The plan is not to be there forever, but to be like the scaffolding so that we can come in and give them that, and then move away from it.
View Lawrence Toet Profile
CPC (MB)
What kinds of things do you deliver? What is the scaffolding in your view? Are you working with them on financials? Are you working with them on complete business plans? What sorts of things are you doing to support them in this incubator?
Arlene Strom
View Arlene Strom Profile
Arlene Strom
2015-06-18 9:56
It is things like that. At Fort McKay, it was about a space where people could come together. It's about helping to support business plans. It's about the skills that are needed to run a business. It's really capacity-building that we're looking at, but it's also some of the practical things about just coming together in a space where you can work on your business.
View Lawrence Toet Profile
CPC (MB)
As you go through that process, are you tracking at all the success of these companies and their longevity? Do they have that foundation so when the scaffolding, as you referred to it, is removed they are able to continue on?
Arlene Strom
View Arlene Strom Profile
Arlene Strom
2015-06-18 9:56
It's early days, so we're still working together with the Tsuu T'ina folks and the businesses there. We're still involved in that program. However, I'm going to take that away, because I think it's a really important piece that we continue to understand whether we've been successful and to learn from that.
Pearl Sullivan
View Pearl Sullivan Profile
Pearl Sullivan
2015-06-04 11:44
I think we all know that we cannot tell our children where to go. What we need to do is to incent our young people to stay home.
I think that critical ecosystems which are highly differentiated are very important because of the geography of this country. In my view we have a system, and in engineering we have three levels of huge engagement: the major companies, the small and medium-sized businesses, and the start-up community.
The start-up community should look to and work with all of IBM, Toyota, GM, and Magna equally to be part of this non-linear process, because for the deployment of disruptive technology, first you have to develop it and then deploy it. There is a chain of events that's highly non-linear and very complex.
If we put them all in the same ecosystem, they learn from each other and they can have a common platform to build off each other, and they complement each other. The new products and services will come from the complementary connection.
Pearl Sullivan
View Pearl Sullivan Profile
Pearl Sullivan
2015-06-04 12:07
Thank you for your kind words, Ms. Sgro. I really appreciate them.
First of all, I love education and I love students. I think I represent thousands of academics who feel the same way. But I have to echo what Patrick just mentioned, that open data is really about sharing things.
What is unique about Waterloo is that it was founded 57 years ago with a very unusual IP policy. Whatever you think of on campus, you own it. The dean has no control over what you want to do, which is very nice.
Most of our students start companies in their second year of engineering. I believe the fact that we have 500 engineering companies in the Waterloo region hiring thousands of people is due to the IP policy and core education. When students go out to work for four months in a company, they see what the needs and the technology gaps are, and then they come back and they start a company.
What is very important for us is to support them. The early innovation is happening. We have to support and to incubate them while in school—it's very important—and teach them a little bit about business, because they are taking risks while they're studying.
The IP policy is important. They must own it. What we're doing in engineering school is we're supporting them all the way past graduation. Next week is convocation. We have 1,200 engineers graduating and we probably are in touch with all of them. If they want to start a company, we offer the campus, labs, equipment, the library; they are open to them. We have started an entrepreneurship alumni program, which allows them to access anything on campus.
That's really important. The role of university does not end after you have received your diploma at convocation. You walk across that stage to get your diploma, but it doesn't end there. We have to help them past their graduation.
Pearl Sullivan
View Pearl Sullivan Profile
Pearl Sullivan
2015-06-04 12:31
The intellectual property policy at Waterloo allows the creator to own it. If a professor or a graduate student work on a project together, they co-own it. If one of them decides to commercialize, they sit together with the help of our commercialization office and decide how any profits and revenues from the project will be split. Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, but there's a lot of interest in creating new knowledge, so that's what's good about it.
In the case of start-ups, many of our undergraduate students, and increasingly more of our graduate students, are starting companies from their theses. We support them and provide them, again from the WatCo office, the Waterloo commercialization office, with opportunities for them to work. They do a project with industry. There are opportunities for agreements to be set up between the professor and his or her group together with companies.
In the field of technology, you don't really have to buy all IP, you need to license it because it's changing. In two years it's probably obsolete. What professors do is they license the IP for a number of years, and then they can license it to multiple different companies. The platform technologies can have different applications, so the core may be the same, the source may be the same, and you can just change it with applications.
View Annick Papillon Profile
NDP (QC)
View Annick Papillon Profile
2015-06-02 11:44
I would also like to address the issue of the growing number of business incubators in the area of new technologies. What do you think are the positive and negative aspects of that kind of development?
Pierre-Luc Simard
View Pierre-Luc Simard Profile
Pierre-Luc Simard
2015-06-02 11:44
Business incubators make it possible to fail fast, fail often.
I'm sorry for paraphrasing. These incubators allow for that to happen. It involves trying an idea, holding meetings and discussing with other people who are also innovating to come up with promising ideas that will produce a change. These incubators make it possible to try these things out at a very acceptable risk level. You don't have to mortgage your life to test out an idea and start a business.
Pierre-Luc Simard
View Pierre-Luc Simard Profile
Pierre-Luc Simard
2015-06-02 11:56
We rarely get the chance to work directly with universities. In our case, usually what will happen is.... I'll use the example of an insurance company going to a research lab within the university. They're already working with a partnership and finding algorithms to define how you could, for example, define the driving skills of one of their clients. Then, in bringing it to us, it's about how we can make this a rich user experience, how we can take that research and make it an actual product. That would be an example of where we work with universities, but not directly with incubators.
We work with start-ups, not necessarily out of universities, but either privately funded start-ups or self-funded start-ups, where we essentially are their engineering force to bring their product to market in the first version. We work with them both at creating inside their company a force that will be able to maintain that product and also at being there for extra capacity and for moving to faster delivery of new features, for example.
View Judy A. Sgro Profile
Lib. (ON)
Welcome. It continues to be an amazingly interesting study, and it's fascinating to hear from all three of you.
I will start with Mr. Simard, and continue on.
How long have you been in business? How did you get to the point where you are one of the top 500 companies or in that range? Would you give us some background on how you arrived at where you are today? Then I would like to know what kind of roadblocks were in your way to achieving the success you have today.
Pierre-Luc Simard
View Pierre-Luc Simard Profile
Pierre-Luc Simard
2015-06-02 11:58
We were founded at the end of 2007. The bulk of our growth has been organic, simply through references. To this day, we actually don't have a sales department. Most of our growth has been through word of mouth and through creating very good products for our customers, who then refer other customers to us. To this stage, that's how we've been growing.
We are starting to find ways to expand throughout Canada and getting known to a wider audience. We've been very present in Quebec, but less so in English Canada, in Ontario and so on. Really, that's where we're looking as far as expansion and growth go.
I just want to make sure: does that answer your question?
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