EW 021 – How Edmonton Global Wins By Attracting Foreign Direct Investment And Growing Exports For The Edmonton Region – with Malcolm Bruce, CEO Of Edmonton Global

Gord (00:00)
Malcolm, welcome to the show.

Malcolm (00:02)
Thank you.

Gord (00:04)
Well, it's really good to have you here and I really appreciate the fact that we're going to get someone where, if I say three decades of experience in there, there's a few in there, but this most recent one, with the leadership role that you're in, people are going to be really interested in hearing about it. But before we kind of get into the wind that you're going to bring us today, give us a sense of who you are. If you're at sort of a networking event and you had to introduce yourself, what would you say?

Malcolm (00:29)
Well, my name is Malcolm Bruce. I'm the CEO of Edmonton Global. And Edmonton Global is the regional economic development company that looks after the 14 member municipalities that make up the Edmonton Metropolitan Region. ⁓ And if it's about me and myself, I've got 43 years of service to others. So I did 30 years in the Army. And since my retirement in 2012, I've ⁓ taken senior leadership roles, mostly at the CEO role ⁓ in the Edmonton Region.

Gord (01:00)
lucky to have someone with that kind of pedigree. My guess is as you sort of move amongst the people that you need to move amongst, you'd have sort of that confidence and ability to sort of walk into any room and get the right things done given the history that you've got there and given where you're at sort of age and stage for what you're doing. One of the things I'd like to ask now, and if you can just give me a little bit more about Edmonton Global so that people really get the context of maybe, you mentioned that there's the 14 sort of partners, but the

What, if you can explain a little bit more so that we know the impact of WebMN Global and what it does.

Malcolm (01:33)
Yeah, so Edmonton Global is the first of its kind in the Edmonton region. It's a regional economic development company. So it takes all the assets that are the Edmonton region and think about people, place, capacity, puts them into a value proposition that we take to the international market. So our job is to radically transform the Edmonton region's economy and grow it. And we do that through two principal levers. The first one is foreign direct investment, attracting investment into the region that would otherwise go elsewhere.

And the second one is helping companies that need that help to go into the export market. ⁓ And that means taking companies into market, we'll have products that the rest of the world wants. And really that's sort of the two main levers that we use to be able to radically transform the region.

Gord (02:17)
Love the description. Maybe just an example of a foreign direct investment that Eminent Global was involved with bringing to the region. Any sort of example there that we can give a couple sentences on?

Malcolm (02:26)
Yep. I always used the first one that we ever had, which was in 2019 because the organization I was employing number one on the 1st of July, 2018. And it was Polycar. And Polycar is a plastics manufacturer, bag manufacturer. They use the pellets that come out of the Dow facility that's up in Fort Saskatchewan. They're located just south of 41st Street in the Edmonton proper. And the reason why I use them is because once that final investment decision was made,

It is a $40 million capital investment, created over 70 jobs, and the CEO is an incredible human being. And he donated $50,000 to the University of Alberta, donated $50,000 to the new School of Business at McEwen. He sits on the City of Edmonton's Mayor's Business Advisory Council, and he also runs community events here to empower people to think about things differently. And that's one person. And...

He's already purchased a property next to his current lease to expand. So that's what one final investment decision does and the impact on community is amazing.

Gord (03:35)
So we can see then if Edmonton Global kind of gets their part of the puzzle correct. This is a really good example of kind of the major, major impacts that just one deal can do. And again, we don't have the five hours to go over everything that you've done along the way to kind of find all those things out. That's great. Well, one of the things that we'd like to ask then to kick off the interview here is to say, if you had to describe one of your biggest wins with Edmonton, biggest wins, what would it be and how would you describe it?

Malcolm (04:03)
Truly, it's the establishment of this regional economic development company because it's such a big partnership. It really takes the individual assets of the region and puts them under one regional narrative that we take to an international market. So if you think about Japan, Korea, Germany, Brazil, these are countries that maybe not thinking about Canada as a first and foremost place to invest and then they're certainly not thinking about places like Alberta or Edmonton unless it's a known product.

So what our job is, is to make sure that they understand that there's something here that they may be interested in and then bring them into the region so that they get to see the actual tangible assets. And I could tell you things like the talent production we have here is second and un-globally. The facilities that we have here and of course the innovation ecosystem that really supports the sort of future look.

These are all things that quite frankly, while people talk about it, we're making it happen here every day.

Gord (05:05)
So the win is, congratulations by the way, the win is getting ⁓ Edmonton Global established, getting this entity in play. And so I now want to jump into what I call the anatomy of a win to sort of break this down a little bit further and as in talking about, you what is the strategy, work plan, people, operations and results behind the win. So if you're going to form this type of entity, it doesn't happen overnight. You know, when we think about some, what was the vision, the values?

the goals strategically that needed to be put in place to get this win to happen.

Malcolm (05:40)
Okay, as I indicated earlier, I was employee number one on the 1st of July. So what it took to get to that one July hire of me was a over four year process to make it work. So the very first thing was there was a planning body that used to be in the Edmonton region called the Capital Region Board. It then subsequently changed into the Edmonton Metropolitan Region Board. And it was where 24 mayors at the time sat around a table and did land planning.

And there was a mayor, Stuart Houston, who still sits on council in Spruce Grove, that basically said in March of 2014, I think we need to get into regional economic development. We need to at least talk about it. So that was the first, if you will, ⁓ authoritative sort of decision to start exploring this. We then subsequently had a very large ⁓ gathering, work session of all the political officials and others within the region in October, November of 2014.

And basically really to highlight a couple of challenges. And here set out the gaps, the challenges. So everybody understood why it was important to have a regional economic development and to see, because without one, we were being left behind. Cause nobody knew where St. Albert was or Spruce Grove or Sony plane or, you know, Sturgeon County or Strathcona County. People just had no clue. So the fact that we were called the capital region board.

One international site selector showed up and said, okay, so I've looked for capital region and I found Moscow, I found Ottawa, I found Washington, but I didn't find Edmonton. And as an international site selector, you make my job easy because I don't even think about you. So you're not even on the table. So that really made them think. in June of 2015, they changed the name from Capital Region Board to the Edmonton Metropolitan Region. So we're now branded in place.

And the example I always use to people is say, okay, what department is Paris in? And everybody will look at me and go, Paris department? Yeah, like the equivalent of the province or what is Sydney, Australia? What is the state that Sydney, Australia, nine times out of 10, people won't be able to tell you where they are, right? Like what state or what province or department that they're in. So this was important to brand us in place. The other thing that he said was nobody cares about St. Albert. Nobody cares about Spruce Grove.

If we can get them to think about Edmonton, because they don't think about Edmonton the city, they think about Edmonton the region. And it was a real lesson I got from John Tory in Toronto when he was the mayor of Toronto. He said, look, we've talked to many companies, they don't come to the city of Toronto. They come to the GTA. So think about it from that perspective. Bigger is better when you're trying to attract international investment because you get to spread your peanut butter a little bigger across that piece of toast and everybody gets a bite of it.

And when you think about the assets in this region, that's what was really driving this kind of unified approach. And I think about the Northeast where the Alberta Industrial Heartland is, which is a tremendous asset for us. You think about the fabrication facilities in Nisqyla Duke and Atchison and Parkland County in the city of Edmonton. You think about the talent production from six post-secondaries that have 115,000.

people in them all the time. These are the things that drive interest into the region that then allows us to invite people here and actually really showcase and people get to kick the tires, smell the air, touch and feel things and it becomes real. ⁓ So that helps sort of spur an idea say, okay, Malcolm, go away and have a look at this ⁓ regional thing, you know, around economic development.

So that started in January of 2015 where a steering committee was put together, a working group was put together. It really looked at governance, finance, and strategy, those three components. And it came back, but then there was subsequent discussions and on and on it goes until finally it came to a head in March of 2017 where the political leadership knew that this was the right thing to do. We're going to spend time, energy, and effort politically.

to make this thing happen. And so in June of 2017, it became real. ⁓ I was told to go away and incubate a regional economic development agency. so that's, I went to go talk to some friends who knew about these kinds of things. said, what's does incubate mean? And they said to me, startup, here are the eight things you gotta do, go away and do those. And that's essentially how Edmonton Global got stood up. Board was appointed, a strategy was being done.

And I was an interim CEO, so I was doing CEO for both jobs until I was hired into the job the following year. So as I said, stood up in June of 2017, man started to get staffed in July of 2018 with a strategy, with a full board to move the process along.

Gord (10:32)
A multi-year process, taking maybe a little piece of toast and making it bigger so that everyone out of those regions ⁓ get a bite. At moments in time with multiple mayors in a room, multiple interests in a room, competing interests in a room, getting down to really, like you said, brand in place as being sort of the insight that carried some of the theme to go along.

Congratulations to you for what I'm sure is some negotiation abilities, some backroom conversations abilities in there to navigate ⁓ something to get this over the finish line. Because again, just naturally there would be sort of objections along the way in terms of what that looks like. But if you get it right, when we just heard at the beginning of the podcast, when you get it right, $40 million walks into the region along with a supporter. Now I think it's, I'm going to guess it's in the billions at this point, if we actually got out the ledger.

we would find out sort of the really massive impacts and how nice to have someone with all of our story in their head so quickly. Because you're flying around, you're like, here's the assets and let's talk about it a proud way. What a nice thing to be able to go around and do.

Malcolm (11:36)
Well, it's tremendous, right? And what Canadians sometimes forget is that the rest of the world wants what we have to provide them. Energy security, food security, talent, innovation, water. we forget that most of the world drinks worse water than we flush down our toilets. Like, that's the reality, right? And so we sit here and we...

quibble about things when we really actually are ⁓ hugely capable of really truly fulfilling the requirements to help other peoples in the global context, particularly around energy security, food security, innovation. These are things that we could deliver globally ⁓ if we ever get our mind to it.

Gord (12:25)
And how nice, you must sleep well at night because all you have is a good story to tell. Whenever you walk into somewhere around the world, that's great. I can tell you having lived in different parts of Canada, born in Quebec and, you know, Toronto time for some high school in there and then been out here since 99, my wife came out for the theatre arts community, ⁓ which is again unparalleled in terms of the Fringe Festival. And we look at what's happening there. Kids are born at the Grey Nuns Hospital, 25 and 21 now. It's been a great place to raise a family. So I would add that into...

I'm sure something that gets mentioned in your portfolios as those leaders that you say want to make those donations, want to come here with their families and establish themselves here. That's pretty remarkable. So we heard a lot about the strategy and the formation. And actually we got into step number two in the anatomy of a win, which was, you know, what is the sort of the work plan? Cause every strategy needs a work plan. But you detailed that for us very nicely about inception to sort of getting it over the finish line to that July 1st moment when you and your little startup are employee number one, kind of getting things going along the way. Any other highlights?

along the way in terms of getting this up and running that we might not have mentioned.

Malcolm (13:26)
Yeah, so the first thing is focus, I would say. you know, many people will have their own ideas about what you're capable of doing and what you should be doing because there are individual, I mean, everybody starts from a position of self-interest, right? And so it's the same with communities, it's the same with regions, same with the province, same with the country, right? So the question was, is we really needed to start with a fact-based data-driven approach. So what we use as our criteria is

where are we globally competitive? And that global competitiveness is the lens that we viewed the various sectors and capacities that we thought we were going to be able to compete with in the rest of the world. So while there are sectors, and I won't mention them all, but there are certain sectors people have their tide, that's their hobby horse. The reality is the Edmonton region is not globally competitive in that particular sector.

So where we are globally competitive, meaning we have the capacity and the asset base to be able to go out into market and one showcase that we can do this at scale and two, we can provide to a global audience. And most people forget we're not buying a hundred trinkets when we send that into Japan. We're selling a million. And so the companies need to be able to sort of scale to meet those demands, right? Don't go into a market if you're not going to be able to meet the demand, because the demand is what drives everything. So, ⁓ we focused on.

five core sectors. But there's a whole bunch of enabling things like the infrastructure and all the rest of it. But what are we really going after in terms of additional investments? So energy was one of them, clean energy in particular, hydrogen as a specific focus. The second one was around agriculture, but what in agriculture? we do grains really good here, pulse fractionation, canola, crescent, beef, you know, there's certain things that we do really well here. Third is artificial intelligence, the University of Alberta.

and the spin-off called the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute is like in the top five in the world. Number two in North America behind Carnegie Mellon in terms of artificial research. The godfather of reinforced learning, Rich Sutton, just won the Turin Award. And the Turin Award is really the Pulitzer Prize for, or the Nobel Laureate for, ⁓ for artificial intelligence.

Health and life science, there's been over $500 million of investment in health and life science the last couple of years in the region. And people go, life science? Yeah, like one of the biggest bio manufacturing facilities is being undertaken by the Applied Pharmaceutical Institute, who's a fantastic proponent to the life science sector, where we're gonna be able to build...

the pandemic response capability for antivirals. So like 70 million doses of antivirals. The only place in Canada we can do large scale fill finish for the vaccines, we have to fill in things. And then lastly, there's global logistics. And the global logistics is the story I love to tell the most because it takes a story to understand. One of it is I always start with, I know it's hard to believe, but the world is not flat. And this is not being pejorative. This is...

Because when we look at a map, we look at it two dimensional, but the reality is, it is a three dimensional. So when you think about flying from Asia to North America, they all fly over Edmonton. And Edmonton is four minutes farther flying time than Anchorage, Alaska, where a hundred large cargo flights a day from Asia stop and refuel. Why don't they fly four minutes farther into Edmonton where they then get refueled and they can...

unload their cargo and move it into the local North American jurisdiction of road, rail and air. And then those big birds fly home. And by the way, we make jet fuel here. For Anchorage, Alaska, they have to barge it from Washington state to Anchorage, Alaska. Makes no sense. And the same thing for shipping. Sailing time from Seoul, Korea to Prince Rupert is nine sailing days.

Sailing time from Seoul, Korea to Australia, which whereas most Asians look to Australia for raw products that Canada would be able to provide, is nine sailing days. ⁓ and you don't have to go through East China or South China Seas. It's closer to Prince Rupert than Vancouver by 36 hours and 64 hours closer to Prince Rupert than Los Angeles. And when you land in Prince Rupert, you can move a rail car with a... ⁓

container on it to Chicago in less than 80 hours. You cannot do that in LA to Chicago because of the congestion. There's very little congestion up in those ports. So that story, which we've been working on for four and a half years, is resonating with some of the largest movers of freight globally. Wow. This is why it's so important.

Gord (18:11)
I love that you've got it down so clearly. It takes a long time to get that to roll off your tongue. It takes a while to sort of accumulate all that knowledge and then again, tell this wonderful story. Rebecca from DTI Technologies, who's ⁓ in hydrogen, invented the whatever the they've got the hydrogen ⁓ diesel engine ⁓ that's going to address some of those issues is there. I've been to the upper bound conference for the artificial intelligence. Mr. Sutton is a remarkable, remarkable story here as well. And you've just

made a checklist of about 20 other reasons why people should be considering coming here. again, Edmonton Global is the one that's out there telling the story from a data-based approach to things that people can really get their head around very quickly and do better business in the area that Edmonton Global is showing off for what we do very, very well. Awesome. So we've got the strategy, we've got the work plan. There's always people involved in a win. ⁓ You know, roles.

attitudes, this kind of thing. If you had to describe the key players and getting Edmonton Global up and running, I'm going to guess you're one of them. And how would you describe maybe your own attitude through that process of three and four years of getting it going?

Malcolm (19:16)
Well, again, I look at it from a perspective where I come from. In my 30 years in the Army, let's just say I was in, we're meant to be able to achieve outcomes in very chaotic environments, right? So we try to stay focused. We have a vision that we work towards and we understand what that vision is. So we know there will not be a direct path to achieve that vision, but we know that the vision is sound if you've done your homework correctly.

So first of all, it starts with a vision. Second of all, it takes with alignment, collaboration, buy-in, and agreement that that's a vision that we all want to achieve. So regardless of the noise and the chatter that happens, and there's lots of it, trust me, and it continues to this day, the question is, is that vision, is that outcome the one we kind of want to make sure that we hit, regardless of what happens? I always use the analogy is we've agreed to buy a bike, now we're just haggling over the price.

Right? So at the end of the day, is that outcome still the one we want? And if the answer is yes, then okay. So there's got to be a solution to be able to get there. And I think so this collaboration and team of team approach and the partnerships, like those people that are like-minded that help move it, including those that must be part of the equation. as I said, the political leadership in the region when Edmonton Global got started was the reason why this got started. Because ultimately we're

a product of the municipalities that formed Edmonton Global. So it is them. But they've also took a risk on creating a structure that was based on a global best practice. Because we showed them, we said, look, we've tried to build it from the ground up, doesn't work. Here's a global best practice. We've searched the world, London Partners, One Columbus, know, Minneapolis, St. Paul, whole bunch of different organizations we looked at. And we had them come up and talk to everybody and said,

This is a global best practice and it was shareholder group with the municipalities. So they have very little, ⁓ you know, what I would call direct strategic decision making. What they do is they appoint the board, they appoint other shareholders, they appoint the auditors and they do, ⁓ they fund the organization and they also change the articles of association if needed. But they appointed a private sector board and that private sector board is singularly focused on driving to results.

So the people that we have on our board, both the initial, the inaugural board and the current board that we have are all business leaders from the community and they are driven to create the outcomes that were mandated to create. So they're focused and, and they are, ⁓ let's just say they are not like most other government kind of tied to boards. These guys and gals are very, very focused on mission delivery. And then lastly, I would say is there were a bunch of enablers like

people that saw this as the right thing to do and have leaned in and continue to lean in to support this particular project. And again, the business community where I take my solace is individual investors coming in and saying, good to go. Business community here saying good to go. know, so we're validated through our stakeholders and partnerships because they see the value of what building an ecosystem, the clustering and growing the prosperity means.

both in a direct way, so tax-based for municipalities, but indirect ways, like more people living in my community, more people shopping in my malls, and induced ways, like for example, you know, better support for the arts and culture that is such a prominent part of the Edmonton region, right? So, you know, for me, it's really about that collaboration, it's about that leadership.

And it really is about building an alignment and a unity and a harmonized outcome for the region itself.

Gord (23:09)
the way you're describing it, because that's a large stakeholder group. ⁓ Right in terms of, but I like going back to your military focus of like, we're going to get this thing done and then having support in these boards and then the key players along the way to sort of keep things on track. Because you know, regardless of the noise, you really want to get results. And I think it sounds like you're doing that. And that just, that's a great explanation. So we've talked about the strategy, the work plan, the people. The fifth, the four step is operationally. If you're to get something like Edmonton Global up and running,

I guess maybe you need some, I'm going to say terms of engagement or some sort of formation formally. Was there a lot of operational components to kind of getting it up and going besides the research and that kind of thing?

Malcolm (23:50)
Yeah, like I said, I went off and found some help and said, okay, what does, you know, incubate mean? And they said, it sounds like a startup. Here's the eight steps. So one of the first steps was a point, an advisory board or a transitional board or something like that. So I went to 11 business leaders in our community that had been recommended to me. Seven of them said yes right away. And they were instrumental in really shaping some of the governance questions that needed to be addressed. Right.

like for example ⁓ the voting structure among shareholders, like for example the funding structure amongst the shareholders. These things were really satisfying. ⁓ And then the second thing was, and I'll explain why they were so important in a sec, the second thing was I needed some trusted agents to help me shape the articles of association. So I had a memorandum of association, so the corporate objectives, it's two pages, and then...

Obviously the articles and what I did, because at the time I had 24 mayors, right? I had 24 municipalities I was working for, but we knew they were transitioning to 13 as the MRB transitioned. So I still had to present to 24. So I presented the articles of incorporation, gave them six weeks, gave them a, a, ⁓ a council motion that they would need to approve to join this voluntary club. And, ⁓ 15 did, and it was shocking. the big 13.

plus two other ones and to a point where one of my mayors said, well, we're a little more successful than we thought because we thought we'd only get five or six. But the reason why is because it was global best practice. People saw the value of what it was going to be doing. And there was the right political leadership in place that understood this regional approach was not about my individual municipality. It was about a win for us is a win for us all. and, or a win for them is a win for us all. Right? Like it was really this

shared investment, shared benefit approach, and it still drives the organization to this day.

Gord (25:51)
pretty remarkable and how lucky with your thorough approach as you sort of pulled things together, one to have the relationships to be able to tap those shoulders. I mean, there's some relationship capital that you were, you know, paying off there as you kind of pulled all that together. These people, again, had their input in terms of innovating on the articles and that kind of thing. And again, had to go back to councils and pull it all together. So that's neat to hear how things formed operationally. The final step here. So it's again, strategy, work plan, people, operations.

There's results. There's qualitative results and there's quantitative results. And you know, this is a pretty big win. So how would you measure the qualitative and what are the qualitative and quantitative results that you would measure?

Malcolm (26:31)
Well, it's been exceptional and I do that on two things. So one, obviously we have this data driven fact based kind of approach. we, know, what are the things that are important to people that we can tangibly say? So those are the kinds of things that says we've had this much capital investment, we've had this many jobs created, we've had, ⁓ and now we're adding the component about tax revenue. So how much do we forecast that to add? So, cause that's very applicable to individual minus values on the direct wins. So that's direct. So direct and

A direct, tangible, quantifiable thing is important. But there's also the induced. And this goes, takes you back up from what's in it for me to what's in it for us. And that what's in it for us, there are communities here that haven't had a direct investment yet, but they know that populations moving into them work elsewhere and play elsewhere. Right? So they have this understanding. So they really have elevated what I think

⁓ is they're thinking around what's a win for us. And that's that kind of leadership that I've seen from municipalities that quite frankly has enabled me to do some of the other things that we're doing. So that's on the foreign direct investment side. So how much is coming in, all the rest of it. But another important quantity is how do we support our companies that are here? Because let's face it, I don't need to sell the region to the companies that are here. They're here already. So...

how do we help them help us, which is how do we get them to expand? And this is where the municipalities are critical because they are, they're the feet on the ground, right? They know their companies best, they know their ecosystem. I mean, I think the city of Edmonton's got like 37,000 businesses. I don't know who they all are, but what they help us do is identify those high performing, high potential companies that we then start to take into market. So not only is it an education and a training piece that happens for companies that may think about the export space.

But it's also an opportunity to take companies in the market. So we took 36 companies last year from the region into five different markets. This year so far we're at 19 companies and two different, well actually sorry, more not. It's well over 20 companies because we've gone into three markets. First time we've been in Japan, we had five agriculture companies. And you can, know some of them, right? Like Token Bitters and the little BeeMaid honey factory, because Japan loves honey, right? All of them.

have come back with some kind of opportunity that they wouldn't have had before. So it's allowing us to grow our in-place businesses as well in terms of export market. But now with the tariffs, we're starting to look at, how can we can't grow with the help of the chambers, World Trade Center? mean, the ecosystem is gathering storm, right? It's gathering weight. We had 155 inbound missions last year.

155. And you can't do it all with just Edmonton Global. It's this collective community of like-minded partners that are driving. The University of Alberta, the Ag Food Processing Center in Leduc, the Industrial Heartland, the Atchison Business Park. All of these people play an integral role on convincing potential investors of why the Edmonton region is so critical to their future. And it really has been a testament that

this continues to really ⁓ work exceptionally well and they're agile and they're flexible and you know, because they see the value and that's been a, I think that's been the big win. So that's kind of the indirect win is you've got these partnerships that are continuing to drive out comes and then you've got, like I said, you've got people investing in the University of Alberta and McEwen University with hard earned cash. So those are things that would have never happened if we didn't have these kinds of inputs. I mean,

⁓ It's again, it's harder to tell that story for some and to link from A to B all the time. But if you look at it broadly, this has been, know, an organization's now focused on the tree or on the forest, not the trees. And it's really enabled others to see the same value proposition that we've seen all along here.

Gord (30:39)
I think when I'm having a tough day, I'm inviting you over for a barbecue because it's an infectious spirit that you've got carried through the whole interview. And this is many years in the making, right? This is conversations. It gets it started up. You got that July 1st day. There's the win. There's all the things. And you can hear the impacts that you've been creating. You got a two-way street going. You got inbound foreign direct investment. You've got outbound. You're assisting our, ⁓

Malcolm (30:43)
Hahaha.

Gord (31:06)
businesses to go elsewhere in the world. You're gathering up and being a bit of a node for maybe some municipalities that wouldn't have the capacity to go and reach other markets. Just simply just the reality of size and what efforts they can put into their budgets to actually kind of get that done. So strengthening and again the spirit of partnerships that you can hear in there, there's a bit of a humility in there. It's not Edmonton Global's story completely here, right? You can hear that it's kind of everybody. Is that fair?

Malcolm (31:33)
Edmonton Global is just one piece of the cog, right? We're a facilitator, we're a storyteller, and we help connect the dots. But if it wasn't for community, and I'm talking the broadest community, Canada, Invest in Canada, Invest Alberta, but really jobs, economy and trade, the Department of Agriculture, our local networks, partnerships that are here, they're the ones that make it all happen. We're just kind of, you know, we're just kind of trying to...

put the pieces together, but it really is a partnership that makes this work. In particular, municipalities, right? Because as I said, they're the coal face, right? So they know the companies that are here in particular, and they also deal with the opportunities that land when they finally make a final investment decision. They're the ones that the deal's handed to that has to sort out the business licensing and the power requirements and the wastewater and the water, right? So it takes this...

This jointness to be able to do it to be able to sort of really deliver the outcome

Gord (32:29)
So there you were on July 1st, and it was sort of day one in the office sort of thing, and we've come up to this moment in time. Is there sort of a bowl you can put on this for us, to let us know, like summarize this win for us from your own perspective?

Malcolm (32:43)
The full impact of this win truly won't be felt for another five to 10 years when a number of the really transformational initiatives that are being worked on right now ⁓ are going to happen. But the thing that I'm most proud of is the collaborative nature of this community that is really helping drive these outcomes. is one of the most amazing experiences I've had. I don't think I've had this kind of this collaboration since I left the military.

It really is a very mission focused outcome based community. I got to tell you, like partners like the airport, like they make things work and partners like AIHA, partners like, know, Applied Pharmaceutical Institute and the, you know, the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, the University of Alberta, NAIT, all these people are why they were being successful.

Gord (33:37)
Thank you so much for sharing your terrific win on the show. really appreciate the time to join us here with the interview today.

Malcolm (33:44)
Thanks Gordon, happy to do it.