Alberta’s business forecast is calling for a strong gust of northern exposure.
As Edmonton hosts the third biennial Meet the North conference and exposition, conditions are being hailed as more than favourable for unleashing Northern Canada’s economic potential.
An area that encompasses the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, Northern Canada offers vast opportunities, said conference chair Paul Byrne.
“What we hope will happen, and our objective and goal of the conference, is to fundamentally enhance knowledge and create an environment that supports businesses small and large,” said Byrne.
“We’re trying to create an environment that not only lets people learn from one another, but also provides them with opportunities to strengthen their future well-being as a business, along with the well-being of the communities they operate in.”
The May 12-14 conference at the Mayfield Inn & Suites in Edmonton’s west end includes four streams – aboriginal relations, workforce and education, economic development, and transportation – and the first Northern Financing Symposium.
Meanwhile, a second related but separate initiative is tentatively set to launch by early fall.
Still in the planning stages, it will see the development of a task force to assist Edmonton-based companies in creating and maintaining links with businesses in the North.
“Hopefully it will complement some of Meet the North’s outcomes and it may be a vehicle to take forward an action item or two,” said Byrne, who will also be chairing this endeavour that originates with the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce’s Northern Development Task Force.
The two initiatives come at a time when business people are comparing the North’s potential to the early promise of the province’s oilsands.
Tom Fredericks, CEO of Calgary’s ECL Group of Companies, sees the three northern territories as the new frontier.
“The way I look at them is that they’re a flower that’s beginning to blossom,” said Fredericks.
“It’s like the oilsands were in the ’80s.”
The North is also home to Canada’s first surface-and-underground diamond mine. Mining and processing activities are continuous at the Ekati diamond mine, running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Located in a remote Arctic tundra region near Lac de Gras in the Northwest Territories, about 300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife, the project is a joint venture between BHP Billiton Diamonds Inc. (80 per cent), and geologists Charles Fipke and Stewart Blusson (10 per cent each).
Company officials state that the mine can reasonably be expected to have a lifespan of 25 years or more as exploration continues to find and test new occurrences.
But the North’s full economic impact on its southern neighbours has yet to be accurately measured, said Byrne.
He cautiously calculated its influence on Edmonton’s economy in “the hundreds of millions of dollars” range.
Absent from that estimate are the proposed $3-billion Mackenzie Valley pipeline project or the benefits flowing to other areas such as Calgary, for example.
It was a combination of the 2001 Meet the North conference, fate and Sept. 11 that set the wheels in motion to allow ECL to double the size of its company within five years.
ECL, which provides transportation, oilfield and environmental services, is now working in conjunction with its new northern partners “to build a northern business that really leaves a legacy,” said Bruce Dillabough, ECL’s business development manager.
“That’s one thing we learned very quickly. If we want to be successful in the North, we’ve got to be there for the long haul.”
In Yellowknife for the 2001 Prospects North Trade Show, following up on possible opportunities from Meet the North, Dillabough was to return on Sept. 11. That didn’t happen.
The unexpected, extended layover provided him with the chance to hook up with Shehtah Drilling president Greg Nyuli, who was also there for the conference.
Nyuli, part of the Denendeh Development Corp., and Dillabough hit it off. With Denendeh equally owned by the five Dene regions – the Gwichen, Sahtu, Deh Cho, Dog Rib and the Akaicho – Dillabough saw an opportunity to go into business with all of them.
“We were looking for solid business partners that had something in common with our group – the ECL group signifies traditional excellence and we saw that traditional excellence in the Denendeh Development Corp. There were synergies that were obvious very quickly,” said Dillabough.
Those synergies resulted in the creation of Denendeh K’ezhe Ltd., a partnership company that will provide transportation, environmental and oilfield services to the Northwest Territories from within the N.W.T.
“It (the North) is very rapidly becoming the land of opportunity,” added Dillabough.
“We can share in the opportunity with the northern communities. It has to be a sharing thing and that’s got to be our attitude going up there.”
Adapting to the northern business culture is important, said Kathy Watson, a former Whitehorse mayor and the moderator of Meet the North’s economic development stream.
“When we’re talking about doing business in northern Canada, we’re talking about a different business culture than you would normally find in other parts of North America,” said Watson, who is also Stantec’s business development co-ordinator.
“Some of the issues are very much frontier issues. That’s one of the reasons Meet the North will have a focus on doing business with aboriginal development corporations.”
First Nations’ governments are a serious entity in the North, so there is quite a learning curve on behalf of traditional business, said Watson.
“Hopefully, people will come away from the conference with a greater appreciation of each other’s business priorities.”
Byrne believes Meet the North’s focus on best practices will help to accomplish that goal by allowing delegates to find out what works.
“This (the best practices sessions) will not be a series of talks from theoretical perspectives, but a discussion on things that have worked well and a few things that didn’t necessarily work out,” said Byrne, adding that each will contain a strong component for participant interaction.
As for the outcome of the 2003 edition, Byrne said: “If we can get four or five key things – about one from each the conference’s streams – that will enhance business to work well, I think it would be a very positive outcome.”
