Questions & Answers
Q&A with Energy Player: Jon Tupper
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- Category: Q&A with Energy Players
Jon Tupper is currently the president of the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce.
A native Albertan, Tupper moved to Fort McMurray from Edmonton in 1997 for a summer job dispatching aircraft to fight forest fires. He says that he fell in love with the natural beauty of the region and the hard-working people who have built a dynamic and storied community. Through 13 years and a career spanning from aviation and transportation management to business development and public affairs, Tupper has always sought to give back to the region that welcomed and mentored him. He has volunteered with Communities in Bloom, the Northern Lights Airshow and Benefit, Leadership Wood Buffalo, the Centennial of Flight, and a variety of political organizations.
Tupper was elected a director of the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce in 2007, and its president in 2010. He also serves as chair of the Fort McMurray Public Library’s board of trustees. It is Tupper’s firm belief that quality of life can be achieved through economic opportunity.
ENERGIZE ALBERTA: The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo recently announced that it will intervene in the regulatory approval hearing for Total’s proposed Joslyn mining project, indicating it does not want the project to be built. Where does the chamber sit on the issue?
JON TUPPER: We feel that the city does have a right to intervene as a stakeholder — it’s how and what they are intervening on that we are concerned about. The letter they issued to the Energy Resources Conservation Board [ERCB] is a carte blanche opposition to the project. We’re asking the city to reconvene the [municipal] resource development review committee [a multi-stakeholder group that includes groups such as the health region, local school boards and the chamber], and through that consultation voice specific concerns to the project, and if necessary, proceed with intervention. They said they’re intervening on behalf of the citizens, yet when we asked them to consult with the citizens, they said no.
Council passed a resolution in 2006 that it would intervene as needed in all oilsands projects. This policy stands immutable at this point, yet infrastructure changes every year. The economy changes every year, and is certainly different now in 2010 than it was in 2006. And the impact of an oilsands project varies on a case-by-case basis.
The city has an economic development division, and one of the areas this economy depends on is the oilsands industry. Council sent me to the Global Petroleum Show [in Calgary this June] to represent Fort McMurray, yet when a company wants to develop a project in the region, the municipality stands in the way. We feel that is a contradiction, and that is why we are sending a letter supporting the Joslyn project to the ERCB.
EA: Do you then believe that infrastructure in Fort McMurray and the surrounding municipality is ready to support another wave of development?
JT: Since 2006, when the municipality first intervened, to 2010, there has been substantial investment by various levels of government in this region. We’re building houses, we’re building bridges — $2.25 billion in investment has or will soon occur to address the many challenges we are facing.
The city is not intervening on a specific issue. They are intervening on the project as a whole. Do we need more teachers, more daycares? I can’t answer that, because the resource development review committee
hasn’t met.
EA: Last winter the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce conducted a survey of the local residents, entitled “My Community, My Voice,” with the goal to provide an opportunity for people to speak up about what they want to see for the community. Now that the results are in hand, what are the key findings?
JT: We learned a lot from that survey. One of the things that I found interesting was that 70 per cent of respondents said that their quality of life was good to very good. Only 6 per cent said that quality of life was poor. Of 1,009 unique respondents [of a population of about 80,000], 40 per cent said that there is a sense of community in Fort McMurray, and that’s what quality of life is. One of the things they look for is more stuff to do — and not just drop-in daycare centres or spray park — essentially they want more commercial businesses.
I was interested that a majority of respondents indicated that they want to participate more in civic elections, but there are some barriers, such as accessing information about the candidates and the issues.
EA: What does the chamber plan to do with all this information?
JT: We’re taking all that information and turning “My Community, My Voice” into its own entity. We’re starting a multi-stakeholder partnership across the community where we will develop questions for the candidates in the upcoming civic election [this October], and disseminate that information [the answers] to citizens by essentially giving each candidate a report card.
That’s going to go out on the web, in full-page news ads and distributed to households. Accountability will be a huge thing — this strategy will be unique to this region, and I believe other chambers will copy this approach when it is successful.
