15 15 years
Features The Futurists 34
The Night 46 Girouxville Exploded 15 years of 53 change Executive 56 Evolution The Class 58 of 2027
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Fifteen years ago, this magazine was the property of the Government of Alberta. And 15 years from now, you’ll probably be reading this magazine on a tablet – or whatever it is that Apple has invented by then. Right now, though, we want to take a moment to reflect on where we’ve come from and where we’re headed, both as a publication and as a province. This anniversary package brings together the best of what we’ve done to date and looks ahead to what’s to come.
In order to do that, we’ve tapped into a wide range of perspectives, from the futuristic insights of 15 of this province’s brightest minds to the creative stylings of author Todd Babiak (who has written the first piece of fiction that Alberta Venture has ever run) to publisher Ruth Kelly’s look back at how the way we do business has changed over the last 15 years. We’ve even made an admittedly speculative attempt to draw up a shortlist of candidates who could become the Business Person of the Year
in 2027, and we’ve built a robust online package of content that includes a sampling of our favourite people and our favourite stories from the last 15 years. It’s impossible to predict the future, even though we’ve certainly done our best to try in this package. But there’s one thing you can bank on when it comes to what the next 15 years will look like for business in Alberta: We’ll be here to cover it for you. >
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t he F u t u r i s t s Fifteen of Alberta’s leaders look ahead to 2027 Predicting the course of future events isn’t easy – just look at any number of magazines in the past (including ours) that have missed the mark with their attempts at it. And trying to predict what things will look like in 15 years? Forget about it. That’s why we’ve left it to the experts to tell us what will happen in their particular fields of interest or activity. Alberta Venture lined up 15 of the smartest people in the province, each of whom represents a different aspect of life in this province, and asked them to tell us what they think will be the single biggest change they’ll see over the next 15 years. Here’s what they had to say. > Compiled by Alberta Venture staff / Photographs Bluefish, Bookstrucker, Colin Way, Greg Halinda and Rob Olson
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There will be by this time a huge growth in aboriginal entrepreneurs and businesses, which will help drive Alberta’s economy. – Brian Calliou
Brian Calliou
An Aboriginal Renaissance In 2027, we are going to see aboriginal peoples playing a significant role in Alberta’s economy. With the current trend of 50 per cent of aboriginal peoples being under the age of 25 and the simultaneous trend of the retirement of the baby boomers, young aboriginal adults will begin to fill many of these jobs. Furthermore, there will be by this time a huge growth in aboriginal entrepreneurs and businesses, which will help drive Alberta’s economy. This would have the effect of a significantly improved quality of life for the majority of Alberta’s aboriginal population, including improved health and socio-economic status. It would coincide with a renewed pride in aboriginal culture and languages. All this, in turn, would benefit all Albertans and Canadians, since the economic contributions and purchasing power of aboriginal persons would help the economy. This is contingent on institutions in our society – government, industry, municipalities and educational institutions – continuing to invest in aboriginal peoples. It will reflect a “new relationship” with aboriginal peoples, who will be viewed and treated as full partners in the development of the natural resources of their traditional lands. >
Brian Calliou is the program director for Aboriginal Leadership and Management at the Banff Centre PHOTOGRAPH BOOKSTRUCKER R e p r i n t e d w i t h t h e p e r m i s s i o n o f A l b e r ta V e n t u r e / A p r i l 2 0 1 2
We will be a vibrant home to entrepreneurs, innovators and young families, and our diverse population will contribute to a spirited arts and culture scene. – Melissa Blake
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MELISSA blake Wood Buffalo Comes of Age With the world looking to Canada for energy solutions, our municipality will grow exponentially over the next 15 years. This growth will be harnessed in a responsible manner by our Municipal Development Plan (MDP), which outlines our development goals for the next 20 years. The MDP will make us a global model of sustainable living in the North. Though our residents will help inject more than one trillion dollars into the Canadian economy, our municipality will be much more than just a raw economic engine. We will be a vibrant home to entrepreneurs, innovators and young families, and our diverse population will contribute to a spirited arts and culture scene. We will offer exceptional quality of life in our communities. We will no longer speak of our potential but of the dynamic and thriving municipality that we have become.
Melissa Blake is the mayor of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo
JACK MINTZ
The Next Great Boom
In 15 years, Alberta will be even more reliant on the petroleum industry than in 2012 due to the more than doubling of oil sand bitumen production, even though the growth profile of other nonrenewable resources will be flatter. Upgrading grows little since it is too expensive and resource-consuming. More oil and gas and manufactured products will be sold to the emerging countries where economic growth has been most robust in the world since 2012.
Thanks to this increased activity in the oil sands, the provincial and local governments will have more revenue per capita than they did previously. The province will not be able simply to spend all the money flowing in as non-renewable resource revenues increase by 66 per cent over the next 15 years. As a result, a $100billion fund will be created to pay dividends to the Alberta population. Meanwhile, Alberta will continue to attract new immigrants, both from other parts of Canada and from the rest of world, and become more similar in culture to other parts of Canada. The province will also become a dominant player in federal politics, as transfers per capita to the rest of Canada grow larger than ever. >
Jack Mintz is the Palmer Chair in Public Policy at the University of Calgary
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DONNA CLARE Translating Riches into Wealth In 2027, Alberta will be a place with a rich cultural landscape. We will have healthy and supportive communities with sustainable infrastructure and an enduring, authentic sense of place. It will be a place for our children, and our children’s children, to proudly call home. But this future depends on our willingness to demonstrate a bit of courage as a province right now. As Albertans, we are presented with a tremendous opportunity. We have more wealth and more ability to influence the destiny of our province than any previous generation. But we need to believe in this place, believe that it is our future and be willing to invest in that future. What we make of our cities and our communities will be a measure of what we value. We can choose to create a legacy of development that is enduring, vibrant, walkable, transit-oriented and sustainable. This means density and diversity and moving away from the zoning paradigms of the last century that separated working from living and created sprawling suburbs and abandoned downtown cores. We need to invest in the public realm and in the quality of our built environment. If we do this, the next 15 years will be amazing.
Donna Clare is a principal architect with Dialog
ROD PEACOCK
Getting Serious about Sustainability
BRAD ANDERSON The Green Revelation
By 2027, we will have awoken to the fact that we have become exactly what we had aspired to be – a thriving knowledge economy. Smart, environmentally conscious, entrepreneurial Albertans will focus on innovation and productivity to steadily reduce impacts on the environment, extend the life of resources and generate enviable social and economic benefits for Albertans and Canadians. Our global clients will demand environmentally responsible natural resource products at competitive prices. We will meet those needs with pride, knowing that we are among the best in the world at what we do: orderly and responsible development of the diversified basket of natural resources with which Alberta has been blessed.
The concept of sustainability – meeting the needs of the present without compromising the future – isn’t new. But in 15 years, sustainability won’t be considered an add-on or specific “type” of project. Instead, as we design land use and infrastructure projects, sustainability will be ingrained in the best technical and economic practices. Sustainable thinking will be a driver that encourages new approaches to innovation and engagement. The engineers and professional services consultants who understand how to view challenges through a sustainability lens and find the right balance of collaboration, technology, expertise and mud-and-guts problem-solving will be very successful in this evolving environment. One thing, above all else, is certain. As long as there are humans, there will be problems to solve. As stewards of human impact on the Earth, the next 15 years will mean a significant departure from “the way things were done” for engineers and the professional services industry. >
Rod Peacock is the CEO of ISL Engineering
Brad Anderson is the executive director of the Alberta Chamber of Resources
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What we make of our cities and our communities will be a measure of what we value. – Donna Clare
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With technology, we can now become more like retail managers than transit managers. – John King
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JOHN KING High-Tech Transit While there are numerous technology options for public transit, it’s really the use of that technology that will determine what things look like in 2027. With technology, we can now become more like retail managers than transit managers. Our electronic fare cards will allow us to track where and when our customers travel, providing us with information we can use to adjust our services to meet customer preferences. We will be able to offer “frequent user” rewards for our most loyal customers and incentive fares at times of lower ridership, much like off-season specials. Perhaps even more important is that, with the aid of technology, we will be able to test new services and markets.
John King is the senior manager of transit projects and studies for the City of Lethbridge
jessie radies
Local Food Goes Mainstream
John esaiw
King of Coal No More While our future power generation mix will largely depend on environmental policy development at the federal and provincial levels, we expect that combined-cycle, gas-fired generation will become the primary fuel choice for generation developers in Alberta. We also anticipate that cogeneration growth will continue, largely as a function of the oil sands growth predicted for our province. Advancement of oil sands technologies such as thermalassisted gravity drainage, which uses more electricity than today’s broadly employed steam-assisted gravity drainage, will have a tremendous impact on electricity usage in the future.
In 2027, local food is no longer a niche product. Instead, it is available everywhere. Community grocery stores, food co-ops, neighbourhood markets, local butchers, bakeries and specialty shops are popping up in every neighbourhood. Local is cheap, relatively speaking, because rising energy costs have increased global food prices, while global warming has lengthened the growing season in Alberta and we are growing produce that would have never grown here 20 years ago. Meanwhile, a couple of natural disasters combined with global economic instability and some crazy weather have created the perfect storm for a global food crisis (defined by huge food surpluses in some parts of the world and extreme food shortages in others). Added to a couple of food recalls that spanned multiple continents and dozens of countries, the world has woken up to the fact that it needs to re-examine its food production and distribution systems. As a result, food security has become a worldwide concern, with homes, neighbourhoods, provinces, states and countries looking at every opportunity to increase local food production and processing to ensure a distributed, accessible and diverse food production and processing system. >
Jessie Radies is the founder of Live Local and the co-owner of the Blue Pear restaurant
John Esaiw is the director of forecasting for the Alberta Electric System Operator
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JODI ABBOTT The Virtual Classroom Mobile computing devices like cellphones and tablets will be game-changers by 2027. The perception of these devices as distractions in the classroom will have shifted towards embracing and promoting them as educational tools. Rather than juggling a work-life balance, adult learners will instead integrate education into their daily lives through the convenient touch of ever-evolving devices like smartphones. With these tools, learners will be able to access educational resources when and where they want. This flexibility will foster a greater degree of independent learning, with more students accessing distance education and collaborating on project-based assignments through social networks. The growth of the virtual learning environment will neither come at the expense of nor immediately replace brick-and-mortar classrooms, however. These technological advances will complement more tried-and-tested resources, like textbooks and teacher-based, in-person instruction. Through this combination, learners will take greater control of their own learning.
Jodi Abbott is the president and CEO of NorQuest College
ED WHITTINGHAM TYLER HEATHCOTE
Saved by the Service Sector By 2027, there will be an increasing focus on environmental stewardship in the oil and gas industry. This shift, led by producers and regulators, will force the services industry to change and adapt. By specifically training employees and developing in-house professionals, service companies in the oil and gas sector will tailor their focus to specific environmental needs. Fewer in-house revenue opportunities will be available to mainstream service companies, and providers will increasingly avoid employing staff with general training. There will be more experts and specialists carrying out services, each trained specifically for the task. This will lead to either a multitude of highly specialized boutique firms subcontracting to the service industry or an increased focus on in-house training, professional development and specialization.
Tyler Heathcote is the president and founder of Ridgeline Energy Services
The Carbon Economy Cometh By 2027, the planet’s ecosystems will be so visibly stretched to their limits that the true costs of pollution will be incorporated into our market-based economies through pollution taxes and regulations. Companies that eliminate pollution from energy production will enjoy significant competitive advantage over companies that cling to today’s business as usual. Less than 25 per cent of Alberta’s electricity will come from coal without any carbon capture and storage, compared to 75 per cent today. A combination of natural gas, wind power, solar and industrial cogeneration/energy efficiency will supply reliable power at stable prices. Oil sands production will have doubled, but we won’t see runaway growth because, as David Emerson’s 2011 blue ribbon panel warned, lower-cost and lower-pollution alternatives will have started displacing oil sands crude in 2020. Albertans will be weathering this displacement comfortably, because the province will have taken concrete steps to broaden its economic base and will have applied its expertise in energy production to developing innovative products designed to capitalize on the global clean-energy economy, worth $10 trillion per year. >
Ed Whittingham is the executive director of the Pembina Institute
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Rather than juggling a work-life balance, adult learners will instead integrate education into their daily lives. – Jodi Abbott
PHOTOGRAPH bluefish
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ERIN O’CONNOR Redefining the Arts
By 2027, the competition for people’s time will be fierce. The entire arts and culture sector will need to present extraordinary and unparalleled arts experiences to get patrons out of their homes and attending live events. People will expect to have their minds blown or their souls tattooed or to have a tangible alteration in their world view in exchange for their time. To meet this public demand, the arts and culture sector must adapt. We can no longer exist solely in the silos of “theatre,” “dance,” “music” or “visual art.” We will reach out to colleagues and peers, to small businesses or large corporations, to combine our resources and create work that is more visceral, poignant, innovative and earth shattering. In 2027, cross-sector collaboration will lead to partnerships beyond our current imaginings. Rather than feverishly protecting our little pieces of the pie, arts organizations will fling the gates wide open, finding new and different ways to give the public powerful and vital experiences of live art.
Erin O’Connor is the executive director of One Yellow Rabbit and managing producer of High Performances Rodeo
BRUCE OKABE
Tourism Takes Flight
KEN GIBSON
Building a More Efficient Future The future of Alberta’s construction industry will likely be more integrated and efficient than ever. Builders will soon approach construction with more developed and detailed building plans, as facilities continue to get more complex. Technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) will become routine and provide both more cost-effective construction projects and subsequent operations over the life of the structure. Such technology will also provide engineers with accurate blueprints to be applied and revisited in order to minimize costly mistakes. As a result, efficiency will be at the forefront of the industry as companies strive to do more with less. Fortunately, Albertans have a tremendous track record in meeting past challenges. I’m confidant Alberta will succeed with imagination, innovation and determination.
It is April 2027, and tourism is the second-largest industry in Alberta, supporting more than 200,000 jobs and contributing more than $15 billion in economic wealth to Alberta. In 2012, 15 short years ago, it was the fourth-largest industry, supporting 90,000 jobs and $5 billion in wealth. Looking back, the single biggest contributor to this growth was the success of a collaborative Team Alberta partnership between industry and government to increase direct air access into our province. As a landlocked region with only smaller U.S. populations within driving distance, increasing the number of inbound flights became our single largest opportunity for tourism growth. We are thankful that in 2027 our energy markets remain buoyant, our pipelines to the West Coast are at capacity and our reputation as Canada’s “can do” province continues to attract investment from near and far. WestJet, Air Canada and a growing number of foreign airlines have come to consider Alberta Canada’s gateway to the Asia-Pacific region, bringing two-way business and cargo and, of course, tourists to experience our breathtaking landscapes and more than a few goosebump moments. AV
Bruce Okabe is the CEO of Travel Alberta More Albertan leaders look ahead to 2027 at albertaventure.com/essentials
Ken Gibson is the executive director of the Alberta Construction Association
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Rather then feverishly protecting our little pieces of pie, arts organizations will fling the gates wide open. – Erin O’Connor
PHOTOGRAPH COLIN WAY R e p r i n t e d w i t h t h e p e r m i s s i o n o f A l b e r ta V e n t u r e / A p r i l 2 0 1 2