EW 037 – How Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Association Wins By Supporting Multi-Billion Dollar Investments, with Mark Plamondon, Executive Director of AIHA

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.164)
Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark (00:03.94)
You bet. Thanks so much, Gord. Appreciate it.

Gordon Sheppard (00:06.146)
Well, I appreciate having you here because if I could run through your brain, you know, leading an organization that is part of really one of the big economic engines of Canada, if not having a major impact around the world, it's just so wonderful to have you here because there's just so much that you and your organization are contributing to, you know, Alberta's prosperity, Canada's prosperity, and again,

the things that you're having, the ripple effect around the world is quite remarkable. But I'm gonna just suggest that for our audience, maybe there's a few people that don't know who you are. So if you could let us know who you are and about your organization, we'd really appreciate it.

Mark (00:42.34)
Sure, happy to do that and thank you very much for having me here. I love these types of conversations and talking about Alberta's industrial heartland.

So to start and to answer your questions there. So I'm Mark Plamondon. I'm the executive director of Alberta's Industrial Heartland Association. And for those who don't know us, Alberta's Industrial Heartland Association, we're an association of municipalities. So five municipalities, the City of Edmonton, City of Fort Saskatchewan, Strathcona, Sturgeon and Lamont counties, those five municipalities all have as part of their area structure plans, a section of land that

is really intended for heavy industrial development. And when you put all that together, it forms Alberta's industrial heartland, which is Canada's largest hydrocarbon processing region and really is an economic engine of the region, the province and the country. So, AIHA, Alberta's Industrial Heartland Association, what we do, we're funded by those five municipalities and we...

work primarily in three areas. The first and foremost area really is promoting project opportunities in Alberta's industrial heartland. So that is marketing the region, traveling the world really, and talking with bona fide major energy companies about when they're looking at their next capital investment around the world, we want them to consider Alberta's industrial heartland. We put together feedstock strategies. We talk to them about competitive advantages that are here.

making the site selection services, a number of things that we do to help companies get up the learning curve as quickly as possible when they're looking to advance a capital project around the world. The second area that we work on is we really focus on improving the business case for the industrial heartland.

Mark (02:32.152)
And so this is really to improve competitiveness, right? So that is largely an advocacy piece, right? When we're working with the provincial and federal governments around incentives or infrastructure or regulatory frameworks, anything that may be a limiting factor for investment. So we're trying to improve competitiveness here to help investment attraction. And we're actually uniquely positioned to inform some policy development at the province and the federal level because we get feedback from companies

around the world. They'll say look in jurisdiction A, X, Y and Z regulatory framework is different, tax frameworks are more competitive, incentives are different and you can take that feedback and you can feed that back to the provincial and federal governments when they're trying to shape policy. And then the other third area that we focus on is community relationships, social license, really to ensure that you've got support for growth. If you want to have a growing heavy industrial sector

having supportive community is really important. So those are the three areas that we work on. And again, we're funded by the municipalities and it's all with the intent of economic development in Alberta's industrial heartland, which is Canada's largest hydrocarbon processing region. It's an area that has over $50 billion of capital investment as we stand today. And it's primarily companies that are upgrading and adding value to the national resources in this part of the world.

that's primarily the oil and gas resources that are here. And then it's all the infrastructure and supporting logistics that accompany that. So in a nutshell, that's Industrial Harland Association and Alpert is Industrial Harland.

Gordon Sheppard (04:15.234)
I hear bridging in there. You're bridging municipalities together. You're bridging between major companies from around the world and bringing information into the situation, bridging into the provincial and federal governments. Again, again, when I think about your importance as a key stakeholder in this region with, you you mentioned that 50 billion, probably going on to a hundred billion and more as you sort of have your plans to take over in the future and make things even better. What a remarkable, remarkable thing. The advocacy piece, thank goodness.

I think we might be touching on that a little bit here coming up, but the advocacy piece is so important in terms of what you're doing as well. And I just need to catch up with you for a sec. How long have you been leading the organization and what's a little bit about maybe something about you I can help me remember you?

Mark (04:56.576)
Sure, So I've been with AIHA now for eight years and it's been a great opportunity for me here. Prior to AIHA, I was working for a Canadian international mining company. I had spent two decades with them. I was a senior executive with them. even though that's not the pet camp space, I was in a position where I involved in international assignments.

involved in joint ventures, I was involved in advancing major capital projects, you know dealing with boards of directors, joint venture partners, understanding what investors are looking for when they need to when they're looking to invest capital. I mean all of that I was very fortunate to be involved in over the last couple of decades or for the prior two decades I should say and then I think that's positioned me well for being involved here in Alberta's industrial heartland and so

AIHA offices here in Fort Saskatchewan. I've been in Fort Saskatchewan for a long time. Really, moved up to this area from British Columbia in 1995. So, happy to be in Fort Saskatchewan and happy to be part of AIHA.

Gordon Sheppard (06:11.95)
You reminded me of the musical Hamilton, where there's a comment about being in the room where it happens. Do you know what mean? Like from my, can hear it. You've got a couple of decades of that experience being at that senior executive table. How lucky for the AIHA to get you as a leader, right? And then for you to be there for that long period of time, the eight years now, and I'm sure it'll continue and do that kind of thing. But how unique that you brought that skillset to be again, bridging.

in those major serious scenarios that you were in before. Now you're here at this moment in time. I wish we had six hours to talk to you here today, because there's all kinds of things to unpack from what you've already done from your introduction. But I'm just going to jump in and say, you know, if you had to describe one of your biggest wins in the work that you're doing over these years, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Mark (06:58.19)
Thanks for the question. So when I look at the growth in Alberta's industrial heartland and I think about, you know, key, one of the key factors in helping to enable some of that, I really look at the Alberta petrochemical incentive program, which is government of Alberta program. But how that program came about was through conversations amongst a number of parties and certainly a lot of research by the government of Alberta. But certainly we had identified

Really, in the previous decade, the first half of the, you in the middle of the previous decade, there was substantial investment going to the U.S. Gulf Coast in the petrochemical sector and not coming to Canada. And when you did enough research and work around that and then really advocated to the government of Alberta and...

emphasized how important it was to implement a material incentive program to be able to level the playing field with respect to attracting large-scale petrochemical investments. I'd say that program and incentive plan that the government of Alberta has put into place has been a significant win for the region. We are so pleased that that went into place. We're so happy to be able to help inform and have a voice into that happening. But that's a big win for the region that I think has led to some large-scale

final investment decisions in this region, some significant ones, and multi, multi-billion dollars of investment are coming into Alberta's industrial heartland, and a key factor in that is the incentive framework here, and so I think that's a win for the region, and I think we're really happy to have that program here.

Gordon Sheppard (08:37.454)
How wonderful. And again, when we look at the Alberta Industrial Heartland Association as sort of one player in that, I know in the pre-interview we talked about, it's not sort of your organization's win, it's the win for, like you've said already, for the region, for all of us. Because there are so many players that come into play. Anytime you talk billions, doesn't matter what industry it's in, there's a lot of players. Now you're sort of a contributor to this win, and that's part of what we get to focus on here today, because that's your area of expertise, but certainly we can appreciate that.

the province is there. And then I think you really emphasized in the pre-interview, you it really is those companies that finally get sort of all their boxes checked by the time they go to make an investment. But there's a pathway. You have to tell that story. have to lead them, in a sense, to helping to get that win. So from the AIHA perspective, in terms of contributing to the win, how would you sort of frame that up a little bit?

Mark (09:29.402)
Yes, so happy to talk a little bit about that and I mentioned it briefly. So when we were looking at total investments into this region and then into Alberta and Canada and we looked at the previous decade again, you know, when you look at historical data, know, Canada's...

economy about a tenth of the size of the United States. So you know in the petrochemical sector you'd see about 10 % of the North American capital investments going into Canada and around 90 % in the United States. And then around 2014 when we're tracking this and you can see the data you had a substantial shift. You dropped from 10 % of that capital investment in Canada down to 2%. And you dug into why that is and what was happening in the United States.

is I think they recognize, they're quite savvy here, and they recognize that, you know, for these large-scale bricks and mortar type of investments that provide decades and decades and decades of economic prosperity for the region. And when I say decades and decades, it's true, like the first investment here in the art line was in the 1950s and it's still going today. recognizing that these types of investments provide decades of economic activity,

opportunity for the region, they really focused on fairly lucrative incentives to attract large-scale petrochemical investments. And this is all in conjunction with some of the technology developments in horizontal drilling and shell fracking and all these things that really drove the feedstocks in the United States for petrochemicals.

You saw a substantial shift in that percentage of total capital being invested down here. So we recognized that, did some research on that, looked at different incentive frameworks. We periodically still do today conduct studies. If you were to build a specific pet camp plant in the Heartland versus a specific pet camp plant in other jurisdictions, and you consider access to markets and tax frameworks and feedstock costs and...

Mark (11:34.574)
logistics costs and you put all that together, where is the best jurisdiction to put a PET camp facility? We did this study back, you know, eight years and seven years ago or so and we determined the gap, the competitiveness gap between industrial heartland and the US Gulf Coast and so that gap we felt like was the magnitude that was needed for an incentive program that would close that gap and level the playing field.

And so that became part of the conversation around how material should an incentive program be. And so that's part of the work that we did and part of the conversations that we had to try to help to inform the importance of leveling the playing field, the magnitude of what that playing field leveling needed to be. And that all became part of the conversation.

Gordon Sheppard (12:19.116)
You've helped me jump into a step here and this is so good because you've really framed this quite well. The win we understand is the incentive program. We're starting to hear historically how that came about. saw this, you said you mentioned you've got the stats. You saw this drop in investment up this way and what you sort of needed to build the business case to allow then all the thinkers, all the players in a sense.

to start to really get invested in why should it be here? And then the governments came along to provide the incentives. And I'm sure the companies were part of that conversation too, as you sort of move things forward. So again, you're bridging, you're a node to the conversation in terms of assisting things and how things can go forward. That's great. So we know what the win is, the incentive program. We know sort of some of the history here now. I'd like to jump into what I call the anatomy of a win at this point. And we talk about the strategy, the work plan, the people, operations and results behind a win. You just actually mapped out a whole bunch of the

strategic highlight, which is wait a second, we thought we were getting a roughly, you know, population percentage or whatever you want to call it, investment into this region, but it dropped. And so the strategy is we got to do something about this. Is that about like in terms of strategic highlights, what was the strategy to sort of help get this incentive program up and running?

Mark (13:26.628)
Whoa.

I mean, you nailed it. So the role of R-Shop really is investment attraction, economic development in you. when talking, and again, when you're out in the world talking with companies and they'll say, look, this is offered in this jurisdiction, this is what this jurisdiction looks like, and you can do the math, it was reactive, certainly, because you're looking back, you're saying, wait a sec, what happened to the investment in this region for the last five, six years? So it was reactive, and I think it was reactive in general

in everybody's part here, but you're reacting to what companies are telling you, what the data is showing you where capital is flowing. And so I think...

you know, just as part of the work that we do to see where investment is going and where it needs to go and then getting the reaction from companies. It really helped inform what needed to happen and what was a key component here. And you'd mentioned it briefly before as well. Again, this is all conversation in the ecosystem, right? You've got companies talking about what they're seeing in other jurisdictions. You've got government folks in the dialogue as well. And you're really building a...

I guess a bit of a, I mean you'll never have complete consensus, but you're building momentum around the necessity to have this kind of government support in order to advance these types of projects.

Gordon Sheppard (14:42.702)
Well, and you folks must be good storytellers. Talk about being in the room. There would be sentences rolling off your tongues at the right moment, backed up by the studies that you're doing, backed up by the relationship building that you've done to help to tell the story, to stitch this together. Because this is not a weekend project, right? This is a multi-year sort of approach that takes, you know, all those pieces to fall into place to get those, like you said, decades long investments into the region.

Mark (15:08.654)
Yeah, I mean, around storytelling and relationships. Yeah, I think we've been very fortunate over the years. The government of Alberta has, Alberta Energy in particular, and Alberta Environment and Parks as well. We've had very strong relationships with them. We've been fortunate to have good dialogue with them and really be able to sit down and talk about a lot of these things and see where we have pinch points and limitations. I mean, there's other wins as well, but we're just talking about the petrochemical

incentive as well, but we've really been fortunate where we've got the government is listening, we've been able to inform and they've been listening to some of the things that we've learned just by being out in market. And the incentive program is one, but there's others. Regulatory streamlining is another example.

Gordon Sheppard (15:56.463)
all kinds of things that you're participating in. I don't know if we could have some sort of trust index, but I'm gonna just suggest that AAHA would be a trusted partner in a sense, in a lot of these conversations for helping that story to move forward in terms of providing best in class information, best in class sort of, you know, moving the pieces around for helping to tell that story. Again, that has been a part of leading to the incentive program, which has been a part of generating this economic.

growth. Wonderful. So we know what the win is. We know the sort of the strategy behind it why we've got to get that moving. There's a timeline to this and you've already started to get into that timeline. Wait a second, there was a moment where you saw a dip in investment and that sort of maybe starts the clock ticking to a certain degree. How long then do you think did it take for the incentive program to kind of kick in? And then since then, how many years has it been thriving in a sense?

Mark (16:44.762)
Yeah, so if I look back, and so I started in 2017, and at that time we using data from the 2014, we're looking back two or three years, but around that time, the province at that time was talking about something called the Petch Chemical Diversification Program, which was around diversifying the economy using the natural gas and natural gas liquids feedstocks. So, you know, this conversation is 2016, 2017.

sort of the first program and then that petrochemical diversification program rolled into the APIP, I think it was 2019 if I recall correctly. But anyways, it's about that time frame, right? So that's seven, six, six-ish, six, seven years ago and there have been...

fairly substantial final investment decisions in Alberta's industrial heartland from companies that have utilized the Alberta Petrochemical Incentive Program. So that's about the time frame we were talking about, I think at that time if I look back, I mean there was some urgency around, look, we're not seeing the types of capital investments that we need to, and we need to essentially move as quickly as possible.

Gordon Sheppard (17:59.055)
It'd be fun to map the timeline out for the next seven to 10 years and see how this sort of makes it more of an impact. Cause it takes a long time to lay foundation like this, imagine then, cause again, I'm sure you could, whether you could say them or not or whatever, we could talk about the actual investments that were made and how that sort of laid the groundwork. Sorry, I had a chance on the podcast to interview Malcolm Bruce as the head of, know, Eminem Global attracting foreign direct investment into the region as well. Again, not exactly the same story in terms of the diverse things that they're looking for, but that whole thing of like telling.

people telling the world about, in your case, the Alberta Industrial Heartland and taking it out there and getting those relationships to actually get concrete results on the ground. How lucky for, sort of in a sense, the whole population in Alberta and Canada that you folks are out doing what you're doing to make those, like that multi-decade thing that we're attracting these multi-decade, multi-job, solid investments that everybody's sort of winning with. I think that's really, really interesting. So we've got the strategy, the work plan. There's always people involved anytime we have a win.

I'm gonna say you're a bit of a player if you've been in it since 2017, like you've been in the game. Now, I think if we got the whiteboard out, we couldn't have enough whiteboards to fill in all the stakeholders that are involved, But what I'm looking for in this conversation is when we think about key players, there's you and your team. Let's start there. And how would you describe you and your team's attitude at the beginning of this process to now? And what's that been like? Peaks and valleys always with these things, but...

Mark (19:07.897)
Right.

Gordon Sheppard (19:23.086)
How would you describe the attitude of the people involved in getting this to help getting this to happen?

Mark (19:28.25)
Yeah, so our team, I mean, we're a small team. Like right now we've a total of 10 and I gave those sort of three areas, right? got four people and three people. You we've got small little groups of three or four people. I think with any process, of course, things go through.

always some discovery about what you're seeing out there and then advancing conversations and then perhaps some frustration that it doesn't go at the pace that you hope but then some excitement around we're starting to get traction and I think we sort of went through that period of

gyrations, if you will, around baby steps, right? You step forward, you've had some great conversations, and then maybe a step back where things aren't moving as quickly as we thought, and then some more step forwards. in general, think we were able to, and again, there's a whole number of stakeholders. I don't want to imply this is just us, but I think the conversation.

was able to get recognition that this is certainly something that is necessary for the region and for the province. politically, there's more and to get an incentive program in place, which can be seen as corporate welfare by others as opposed to really just investing in multi-decade investments, always it's going to take more time to get the various stakeholders across the board. So from our team standpoint, I'd say how we felt, if you're asking how we felt, it's sort of a

a range of after discovery was that sort of one step forward, two back, and then two forward, one back until he advances further. But the total, sorry, I was just gonna continue here as well, sorry. But there's again, multiple parties involved, right? So obviously companies that are looking to advance projects, they have significant voice talking about, look, this is what we're interested in doing, but we need some support because we're competing.

Gordon Sheppard (21:05.219)
Well, we're

Mark (21:24.29)
around the world. When you talk about multinational companies that can put their capital in various countries, they're always competing internally for where to put their capital. And so that was a significant voice. Industry associations were a significant voice. And then I'd say the bureaucracy, the folks working within Alberta Energy and other divisions of the government were also voices here as well.

Gordon Sheppard (21:49.647)
Thank you for gyrations. Isn't that just the truth in terms of any work that most people do? But when you're talking about these big long haul ideas, If we're gonna build the cathedral and it's a thousand years ago, my grandkids are gonna work on that cathedral. It's that kind of thing. So there's that sort of cathedral building in a sense that you're doing here over what's getting on or will get on a decade soon enough. And then when you look at the need for your work, growing in importance in our geopolitical times as being even more significant.

for what's happening, especially when you're able to then provide that place for those major players to say, yeah, I want to set up shop here for all those right reasons that you've been talking about. So we've heard a little bit about your team and the gyrations in a sense that we go through. And we could go through, of course, if we had to, and in a longer time, we would talk about some of those key government internal people, whether they're.

public facing or in behind the scenes, whether these company things are public facing or in behind the scenes, all the things that it takes to get major investment across the line. Thanks for a little bit of touch on that. And I'm sure people can get in touch with you if they need to chat with you about it. But the other part then it becomes, we said strategy work plan people, operationally, if we're gonna get, the incentive program, it legislation that was put in place? Or was it sort of more, what type of bureaucratic levers were pulled in a sense to,

to create this.

Mark (23:11.298)
So it's a government program. I don't think specifically there's specific legislation. It's a government program put forward by Alberta Energy that what it does, how it works is for companies that are investing in, it's above $150 million, but most of these are multi-billion dollars. I believe the threshold is 150.

Anyways, it doesn't matter. These are always hundreds of millions of dollars. But if you're upgrading either methane, ethane or propane, which are all components of natural gas, and it's in the petrochemical sector, once the plant becomes operational,

the government of Alberta then will provide a grant over the following three years until the total is up to 12 % of eligible capital. So you're essence getting up to 12 % of the capital returned to you by the government of Alberta to help really with your cash flow and with the economics of your project and that's how levels of playing field. But what was really important about the way it's structured and I think what really makes good sense is it

protects the taxpayer in the sense that it's not cash upfront before a plan is built. You get all the economic benefits of the construction of the plant and then the plan gets up and running and then the grant is provided. And so it's really a sound investment for the taxpayer because you are investing in essence after the economic benefits of construction have happened. But you are supporting a plant that will operate

for a very, very long time. And so I think it was structured very well operationally. And so I think the governments did a great job. Not only do they structure it this way, I think, which is a low risk way to structure it for the taxpayer, but for the companies, they made it very transparent. There's criteria to this program. If X, Y, and Z happen.

Mark (25:09.316)
It's more than three criteria, but if there's criteria, then the company knows, it's transparent, that they will be getting this grant and they can put that into their economics. It's different if you need to apply to a program and hope to get chosen, right? It's not how this program works. It is criteria-based. Companies know that when they've met the criteria that they will receive the benefit after the plant is up and running. So I think it's very well structured. It's material enough to be successful.

of Alberta that did a great job on this.

Gordon Sheppard (25:42.063)
How wonderful to hear the result of all that stakeholder interaction early in before it got up and running for the program. You can hear that's nuance, right? That's not a government sit in my office, here's the program. There's a lot of interactivity that you can hear that would have helped to form a solid way forward. Is that making sense?

Mark (26:03.428)
Well, I think you've picked up on that. I think that's exactly what I did. I think there's a lot of feedback, a lot of conversations, a lot of recognizing or learning about what's working in other jurisdictions, what isn't. And we're fortunate to have a lot of insight into that as well. And I think a lot of that conversation happened to put together, I think, a very robust program here that has demonstrated is working because there have been investments, substantial amount of investments in Alberta's industrial heartland.

that are utilizing this program.

Gordon Sheppard (26:36.076)
Interesting and that framework I would hope would be studied in a sense the way you've described it in terms of the benefit to the taxpayer when you're sort of pulling the best things together. I'm sure the companies know they're savvy. They know why it works and what it works for them. But like you said, they work in multi-jurisdiction around the world. And so again, for them to put this piece in their portfolio with these multi-hundred million dollar billion dollar investments is pretty, pretty important. Wow. We could talk about that all day long. How interesting. So we've got strategy, work plan, people, operations. Finally, there's results.

And so quantitative and qualitative results, quantitatively, the incentive program emerged. And there is a program with criteria that you've described, know, lightly described, and then we know that. In terms of quantitative and qualitative highlights, can you maybe knock off a few of them so we understand the real sort of end results of this win?

Mark (27:27.514)
Yeah, so right now Alberta's Industrial Heartland, we say we have around $50 billion of total capital investments, but back in 2017, 2018, we were in the order of between 35-ish billion, right? And we've seen since Alberta Petrochemical Incentive Program came on, and again, to be clear, it's not just one thing, this is one factor.

But I think it's a significant factor, but it is one very critical factor. But since around that time, we've above $15 billion of final investment decisions.

some of it's still in progress today in terms of construction, but it's not a trivial amount of capital, right? These are significant capital projects and Alberta Petrochemical Incentive Program was a key factor, or was a factor anyways, in the economic calculations for these types of investments. So I think the actual tangible capital investments, we're seeing them. And when we talk with companies, again, when they're looking at deploying capital around the world, this becomes part of the

it becomes part of the economics, it's necessary, but it is all part of putting the industrial heartland hopefully first on the map for companies looking to advance major projects.

Gordon Sheppard (28:50.414)
Wonderful. And again, when you're, the proof is in the pudding now. You're not talking about it. You're saying we've got a framework, we've got a way to go forward. We've got some folks that are already in, hey, what do you think? Do you want to jump on board? I'm sure it's an easier conversation now with establishing this track record as you kind of go forward. That's just great. So we heard what the win was. We looked at the anatomy of the win. And finally, I say qualitatively, how does it, how did it feel? Like you've been in, you've been at it for a bit. Like what's that feel like for you to get this kind of win?

Mark (29:20.462)
Well, every time, well, first of all, it always feels great. Any time a company decides they make a final investment decision to put capital in the industrial heartland, mean, that is, it's always a great feeling, because there are always long conversations for everybody, right? Lots of work, most of the work is heavy liftings by the company, of course. But I think it's a good feeling for all those involved to be able to advance major projects in the heartland. And so,

you know, when, you know, the long conversations, big decisions and quite few and far between really, right? When you talk about the industrial art land, there's 23 large facilities out here, right? We're not talking thousands of small businesses, we're talking 23 large facilities in this region. So anytime someone has a major brownfield expansion or a major new greenfield project, it always feels great for my team here and for I think all the stakeholders in the region to be honest.

Gordon Sheppard (30:18.712)
Wonderful. As we get out of here and towards the end, I always like to ask leaders like yourself, you you've led, this is one of many, like you said, initiatives, but you know, in terms of, for leaders that are jumping into this multi-stakeholder, multi-billion sort of type of thing, the leadership that it takes, what's your sort of leave behind for a couple sentences for leaders to suggestions that you would make to maybe give them some hope as they tackle this type of big idea?

Mark (30:49.508)
Well, that's a great question and not something that I've thought of at the moment, but I would say this in general and maybe it's not exactly in this leadership role, but just in general. think when I look at the period of time that I've been involved at an executive level, I've always been, at least me personally, been one to try to advance things and let's not make

great or perfection be the enemy of good. Like let's advance, let's put some ideas forward and advance them and then we'll learn from that step. And if we need to adjust and make an adjustment and then do the next thing.

I think you're way better off to make a step forward and then adjust with what you've learned from that step and then get the next step and the next step instead of being stagnant. And if I think in the context of this incentive work that's happened here, again, if I look at the government of Alberta, they initially had the petrochemical diversification program, which was a step, and then learned from there, no, we need to do a few things. We need to be transparent. We need to be more material. We need to expand the, and then segue into Alberta petrochemical incentive program, I think,

I guess the learning here is, let's not hesitate to make a step, learn from that step, pivot, adjust, get the next step, and then maybe we're moving forward. Maybe it's a little this way and then that way, but at least it's forward. If we stayed still in Alberta without economic incentives, I would say we wouldn't be seeing the capital investments here and we'd still be wondering why today it's not happening.

Gordon Sheppard (32:29.09)
wise words from someone again who has been in the room. That is just so valuable. Thank you so much for taking the time to really explain this win on the podcast. I'm really glad you were on the show.

Mark (32:40.89)
I appreciate being here. I appreciate the conversation. Thank you.