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Alberta

ECONOMIC RECONCILIATION IS A PRIORITY AT ENBRIDGE

Published

4 years ago

9 minute read

ECONOMIC RECONCILIATION IS A PRIORITY AT ENBRIDGE

Building and maintaining relationships with Indigenous nations and groups over the lifecycle of our assets is essential to Enbridge’s continued success as a leading North American energy delivery company. An important part of how we do business is to work with Indigenous communities to help increase their capacity to participate economically in our projects and operations. Economic engagement ranges from providing training and employment opportunities that build transferrable skills, to the procurement of goods and services from Indigenous businesses. To tap into Indigenous communities’ growing capacity and desire to participate in contracting and employment opportunities, Enbridge has adopted a supply chain process that requires prospective contractors to include detailed Socio-Economic Plans that outline how they will include local Indigenous communities and businesses in their work for Enbridge’s projects and operations. This approach exemplifies our desire to build long-term relationships which create value for both Indigenous communities and our business.

Enbridge has long recognized that hiring Indigenous businesses supports local employment, gives us the opportunity to understand available services and talent, and helps build trust and relationships. We also appreciate the important contribution that Indigenous businesses make each year to the overall economy.

In 2019, we marked a major milestone, surpassing $1 billion in Indigenous spending since 2011 across our Liquids Pipelines and Gas Transmission businesses. This includes direct spend with Indigenous businesses as well as subcontracting opportunities for Indigenous businesses, suppliers and wages paid to Indigenous workers from our contractors.

Our Line 3 pipeline replacement project (L3RP) is an excellent example of how our supply chain is delivering on our commitment to maximize Indigenous participation. This supports our efforts to advance economic reconciliation in accordance with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action #92.

At $5.3 billion for the Canadian segment alone, the L3RP was the largest capital project in Enbridge’s history. It also represented our largest and most successful community engagement effort – including more than 150 Indigenous communities from as far as 300 kilometres from the pipeline right of way.

As of late September 2019, Indigenous spending on the L3RP totaled approximately $440 million for contracting and wages, while more than 1,100 Indigenous men and women were employed on project construction, representing approximately 20% of the overall workforce.

Indigenous monitors provided environmental and cultural perspective to the project construction team.

“The economic benefits flowing to Indigenous communities from Line 3 pipeline construction are no accident or happy coincidence,” says Enbridge’s Dave Lawson, Vice President of Major Projects. “Rather, they are the direct result of our comprehensive and proactive engagement program and the joint commitments between Enbridge and numerous Indigenous communities and groups.”

The leaders of several First Nations located along the Line 3 route note that “this economic stimulus benefited more than just the workers, it benefited the families and the Nations we represent.” They worked with Enbridge and “found ways to ensure environmental protections, and ways to secure tangible economic benefits and career development commitments for the indigenous people we represent. Enbridge listened and we believe this project has been a success for our people.”

Another community benefitting from the L3RP was the Manitoba Metis Federation (MMF). David Chartrand, President of the MMF says, “In order to work on a pipeline you have to have certification, so we got our people all ready and trained a year before the pipeline went in. We were ahead of the game.”

“I can honestly say,” he adds, “that this is one of the true success stories that we can probably talk about. Enbridge has got a blueprint for other companies if they want to use it.”

This focus on engagement and inclusion led to 58 cooperative project agreements with Enbridge, representing the participation of 95 Indigenous communities or groups.

“From the outset, we made a concerted effort to ensure Indigenous communities understood our project, specifically how they might participate and benefit economically,” explains Kim Brenneis, Director of Community and Indigenous Engagement. “I think the positive results we’ve seen speak to Enbridge’s strong commitment to inclusion as well as to building mutually-beneficial relationships with Indigenous nations.”

Beyond successful engagement, there are three major reasons for the strong Indigenous project participation and spending profile, explains Barry Horon, Director of Supply Chain Management for Projects.

“First, we worked with Indigenous communities to help create the capacity needed to participate in meaningful pipeline contracting and employment opportunities; second, Enbridge adopted a proactive supply chain process that, among other initiatives, required prospective contractors to include detailed Indigenous participation plans in their bids; and third, we implemented a labour strategy to enhance connections between Indigenous job seekers and our primary construction contractors through an online portal and the use of Indigenous labour brokers,” says Horon.

Indigenous men and women, such as Kara Pooyak of Sweetgrass First Nation, made up 20% of the Line 3 construction workforce.

Included in the Indigenous workforce were 27 construction monitor and nine liaison positions that provided both Indigenous perspectives and advice to the Line 3 project team. This helped to ensure that Enbridge’s environmental mitigation strategies – which were approved by the National Energy Board – were implemented during construction.

Another key component of the labour strategy was the now-completed Line 3 Pipeline 101 training-to-employment program. Over three years, more than 260 Indigenous men and women graduated from the program, many of whom have secured work on the L3RP.

Justin McKinney of Swan Lake First Nation is building a career in pipelining, thanks to training and mentorship he received during the Line 3 project.

Our experience with the L3RP led to an assessment of how Enbridge’s Indigenous engagement practices had evolved over the past few years. An outcome of this process was the introduction, in 2019, of our Indigenous Lifecycle Engagement Framework, which now guides our approach to building and sustaining long-term relationships across our business going forward, including for enhancing Indigenous economic participation in our projects and operation.

The framework was shared with several Indigenous nations in Canada. We are now incorporating their feedback into our planning and we will continue to seek to seek their input to ensure that our approach remains in step with their interests and goals.

Thanks to Todayville for helping us bring our members’ stories of collaboration and innovation to the public.

Click to read a foreward from JP Gladu, Chief Development and Relations Officer, Steel River Group; Former President and CEO, Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business.

JP Gladu, Chief Development and Relations Officer, Steel River Group; Former President & CEO, Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business

Click to read comments about this series from Jacob Irving, President of the Energy Council of Canada.

Jacob Irving, President of Energy Council of Canada

The Canadian Energy Compendium is an annual initiative by the Energy Council of Canada to provide an opportunity for cross-sectoral collaboration and discussion on current topics in Canada’s energy sector.  The 2020 Canadian Energy Compendium: Innovations in Energy Efficiency is due to be released November 2020.

 

Click below to read more stories from Energy Council of Canada’s Compendium series.

Read more on Todayville.

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The Energy Council of Canada brings together a diverse body of members, including voices from all energy industries, associations, and levels of government within Canada. We foster dialogue, strategic thinking, collaboration, and action by bringing together senior energy executives from all industries in the public and private sectors to address national, continental, and international energy issues.

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Alberta

Alberta reaching out to Canadians to help kill Ottawa’s job-killing cap on energy production

Published on October 15, 2024

By

Scrap the Cap

S&P Global Commodity Insights found that a 40 per cent emissions cap could lead to a reduction in oil and natural gas production of one million barrels per day by 2030 and a 2.1-million barrel reduction by 2035.

Independent analysis by the Conference Board of Canada, Deloitte and S&P Global tell the same story: the federal government’s proposed cap would require oil and gas production cuts that would put people out of work and drain billions from Canada’s economy. Despite these reports and continued opposition from many provinces, industry, businesses, experts and Canadians, the federal government will soon release its draft regulations.

The proposed emissions cap is a production cap. S&P Global Commodity Insights found that a 40 per cent emissions cap could lead to a reduction in oil and natural gas production of one million barrels per day by 2030 and a 2.1-million barrel reduction by 2035. According to the Conference Board of Canada and Deloitte, the cap could amount to a more than 10 per cent reduction in oil production and a 16 per cent reduction in conventional gas production in Alberta in 2030.

Alberta’s government is launching a national advertising campaign to inform Canadians that this cap will lead our province and country into economic and societal decline. Alberta would be hit hardest and in 2040, the province’s GDP would shrink by 4.5 per cent. Canada’s would decline by 1 per cent. The cap would result in 150,000 Canadians losing their jobs and the loss of $14 billion a year from the economy. The average Canadian family would be left with up to $419 less per month to spend on groceries, housing or fuel, impacting the quality of life Canadians enjoy coast to coast to coast.

All Canadians deserve to know the dangers of this cap, which will negatively impact their families without reducing global emissions whatsoever.

“Once again, Ottawa is attempting to set policies that are shortsighted and reckless. We’re challenging proposed policy that would stifle our energy industry, kill jobs and ruin economies by launching a national campaign that tells Ottawa to “Scrap the Cap.” We’re telling the federal government to forget this reckless and extreme idea and get behind Alberta’s leadership by investing in real solutions that cut emissions, not Canada’s prosperity.”

Danielle Smith, Premier

The proposed cap will put safe, reliable and secure energy at risk while costing tens of thousands of jobs and billions in lost federal revenue that pays for important programs, services and infrastructure. This means lost jobs, hurt families shuttered businesses and less revenue going to the schools, hospitals, programs and services every Canadian relies on.

If left unchanged, this cap would force Canada’s energy industry to curtail production at the expense of struggling Canadian families. When production is cut, jobs, tax revenues and the economy are cut too. It is, in effect, a cap on prosperity that would be felt across the country.

Alberta is encouraging Canadians to visit the Scrap the Cap website and tell Ottawa they cannot and will not support a cap on energy production that leaves Canadians with a lower standard of living and reduced services. Print, television and social media advertisements will run nationwide from Oct. 15 to the end of November to urge Canadians to contact their member of parliament (MP) and share their thoughts. The Scrap the Cap website includes a letter that can be sent electronically.

“We will not stand by while the federal government threatens tens of thousands of jobs. This production cap means billions in revenues down the drain, and we will not let our province’s – or our country’s – economic future be gutted by an out-of-touch federal government. There is a way to reduce emissions without killing the economy… but this unconstitutional production cap is not it.”

Rebecca Schulz, Minister of Environment and Protected Areas

“A cap on oil and gas production will kill jobs and investment and adds to the growing list of federal programs that will kill investments in decarbonization. All Canadians need to let Ottawa know how this cap hurts Alberta and risks Canada’s energy security.”

Alberta is reducing emissions through common sense, incentives and technologies, not taxes or punitive regulations. The oil sands emissions intensity per barrel has fallen 23 per cent since 2009 and is expected to decline another 28 per cent by 2035. Alberta’s overall emissions, electricity emissions and methane emissions are all declining, even as energy demand rises and the economy grows.

The province aspires to be carbon neutral by 2050 without cutting jobs or compromising affordable, reliable and secure energy for Albertans, Canadians and the world.

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Alberta

Alberta’s New Transgender Rules Could Save Young Lives

Published on October 15, 2024

By

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Alberta is leading the country with sensible youth gender policies. Other provinces should emulate them.

Premier Danielle Smith recently confirmed transgender surgeries will be banned for those under 18 years of age. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will be prohibited for youth under 16, while those 16 to 18 years old would need parental, psychiatric, and medical approval.

Biological females will have competitive sports to themselves. Students under 16 who want to change pronouns at school won’t do so without parental consent.

Fifteen years ago, none of this would be controversial. That was before a transgender trend took hold. In the U.S., not so different from Canada, the number of children on puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones doubled from 2017 to 2021, and cases of gender dysphoria tripled.

Advocates for the transgender approach say one’s inner sense of self must be affirmed by everyone around them and by transforming their bodies as closely as possible to the gender they identify with. Otherwise, they may kill themselves.

Such ideas could be challenged on many levels. If gender and sex are separate, why transform the body? Why can’t gender and sex remain separate and go on happily? By wanting to transform their bodies, every transgender inadvertently confirms the link between biological sex and how people typically are and act.

There are other logical incongruities. Trans advocates usually believe in gender fluidity. That means someone may have one gender now, but they could have another gender soon and even change back again. This presents a problem, given current Canadian bans on conversion therapy.

Once someone identifies their gender with the opposite sex, it is illegal for anyone to oppose it in counsel or therapy, with the punishment of fines and imprisonment. Even if someone wants help to steer their inner sense of self, they cannot receive it. A new whim in their shaky self-identification is the only thing that takes them off the transformation train.

Tomboy girls and boys who like fashion should feel no need to change. But now, at an age where insecurities about weight and appearance are especially common, some teens conclude they were born in the wrong body entirely. This lie presents an awful and insidious burden–that one’s entire body is wrong.

Would it not be better to tell youth their bodies are good and give them time to grow up as the sex nature gave them and the names parents gave them?

Kierra Bell, a tomboy from the UK, never got that chance. She sued the Tavistock Clinic for transitioning her, even though as a 15-year-old she was adamant it was the right path.

“What was really going on was that I was a girl insecure in my body who had experienced parental abandonment, felt alienated from my peers, suffered from anxiety and depression, and struggled with my sexual orientation,” she later recalled.

The UK High Court ruled it was “highly unlikely” for children under 14 to have the capacity for meaningful consent to cross-sex medical interventions on gender. This capacity was also “very doubtful” for 14 to 15-year-olds. As for 16- to 17-year-olds, a court order was recommended before proceeding.

Alberta will save innumerable teenagers from a path of regret. When will other provinces follow?

Lee Harding is a Research Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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