Jim Carter
Jim CarterConvocation Address
University of Alberta, June 3, 2004
Your Honour, Mr Chancellor, Mr Chairman, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. Good afternoon to you all.
First and foremost, I want to thank the University for this great honour. It's tremendously exciting for me to be recognized like this … and very humbling to know that it comes from an institution that I hold in such high regard.
You know, when I was a boy growing up on a dairy farm on Prince Edward Island, I never aspired to a day like this, but it sure feels great. And I hope all the graduates here today feel a similar kind of pride because I know how much effort you put into earning your degrees.
But while today is a day of great celebration, the sun will rise tomorrow on a new day … and a new life for you beyond the University's classrooms.
If you feel as I did when I graduated from University many years ago, you'll be chomping at the bit to make your mark. And so you should.
Because the world needs you now more than ever.
The world needs people like you who are willing to take on responsibility and hard work to make it a better place for all of us.
And in times like these when there is turmoil in many parts of the globe, when there is tremendous inequity among people, when the challenges seem truly insurmountable, it's tempting to ask yourself, what can one person possibly do?
My belief — and this is borne out of personal experience — is that you can do a lot.
And today, I want to encourage you also to believe in the power of one.
You are one person but you have many talents — many gifts that you can use to build a career, a community, and a life.
I wasn't born in Canada, but I found much opportunity here. Being raised as I was on a dairy farm, I had an early opportunity to establish a work ethic because the cows needed to be milked every morning and every night. I'm truly grateful to my mother and late father who taught me that it's a privilege to be able to work and contribute.
Today, I run the energy-producing equivalent of a dairy farm — an oil sands company that also runs every day and night the whole year through.
And in the process, I found the opportunity for personal reward that not only includes the satisfaction of being a productive individual in terms of my work and my ability to provide for my family's needs, but also the ability to create a lifestyle unique to myself — not to mention the opportunity to create real value and wealth for others.
This includes well-paying jobs for thousands of Canadians, billions of dollars in tax and royalty payments that help governments provide the social net that our country has come to hold dear, and the opportunity to foster innovation through science and technology.
Importantly, my career at Syncrude also brought with it the chance to open the doors of opportunity to people who haven't always been full participants in Canadian society and here I'm speaking of our Aboriginal community.
Syncrude exists right in the backyard of several Aboriginal communities, and we had the choice of going down one of two roads: we could either exclude Aboriginal people from our business — essentially work around them — or we could choose to work with them to develop their capacity to participate in our affairs.
To the benefit of all concerned, we chose the latter route.
In fact, since Syncrude's earliest years, we have worked with Aboriginal people to ensure that careers in the oil sands would be available to all those who were interested in them. We've worked with Aboriginal entrepreneurs to help them supply a fair share of the billions of dollars worth of goods and services we need to keep our operation running. And we've worked with Aboriginal leaders to help build community facilities that elevate the standard of living for their people.
The foundation for our success on the Aboriginal front has been education. We've worked to enhance access to education and to improve the ability of Aboriginal students to be successful learners.
And the thing I take the most pride in here are what I call beacons of success: the Aboriginal people who beat the odds and who are succeeding in life and serving as role models for their contemporaries and for the next generation.
Now, if all this sounds like outright philanthropy, I want to assure you that it is not. It is simply a story of how our company elected to meet its needs by developing a local resource. In the process, a lot of good is being created.
In a similar vein, Syncrude's diversity efforts and our support for employees who want to continue their education have given many of our female employees the opportunity to work in non-traditional roles. Where they once provided clerical support, for example, they are now finding new careers as business analysts, trades people and heavy equipment operators.
So, as you embark on your careers, my advice to you is this: you can choose to work around people or you can choose to work with them toward mutual goals.
Clearly, I felt that since Canada included me, an immigrant lad from Scotland, in its success, I should include Canada's first people and others who are sometimes disadvantaged in my success.
To put this another way, if you want to create a better world for yourself, you stand a better chance of succeeding if you also work to create a better world for the people around you.
You can do this through your work, as I have and through volunteer efforts, which have also been important to me.
In fact, one of my greatest interests has been to ensure that young people like you enjoy as much opportunity as I have. And that's why I have dedicated many volunteer hours to this University, to Keyano College in Fort McMurray, and to groups like the Boys and Girls Club and the Vista Ridge Ski Hill facility.
As a youngster, I benefited greatly from the education I received and I learned a lot from mentors who took me under their wing. Thanks to them, I turned out okay.
So, in keeping with the old saying, "You reap what you sow," I try to help the next generation get a leg up through my involvement with education and youth development groups.
In a similar vein, I've tried to be a good parent and Lorraine's and my family of six fine young adults, some with spouses, sitting out there today are testimony to what can be created when you take a genuine interest in people.
By now, you've probably guessed that people are my main passion.
And while I don't want to presume I know what your passion is, I do know that you can leverage it into many things: a great career, perhaps, or a great business, or even better, a great community.
A dozen or so years ago, I put my second passion, which is for engineering, to good use when the mining engineering program at this University faced imminent closure.
This concerned me for many reasons, which included my need to keep a steady flow of qualified mining engineers entering the workforce at Syncrude, and my desire to ensure that young people wouldn't miss out on all the opportunity and rewards that the mining industry has given me.
So, I got together with other industry leaders and, together, we launched a rescue effort that succeeded in spades. In fact, today, the number of faculty members has doubled, student enrollment has quadrupled, and the graduate program that had all but disappeared is now thriving. All of which has led to an increased ability within the mining industry to continue contributing to our nation's economy and an increased ability to deal with environmental and social challenges as well.
I mention this story because it's a great example of how you can work to make things better when faced with adversity.
Through the years, I have had to deal with many such challenges and not all of them were of a business nature.
But by tapping into the power of one and the strength of others, I was able to overcome them.
No doubt you too will face times of trial, and I encourage you to face them in much the same way. Find your power of one, your inner strength. Seek help from others and don't be afraid to take risks. If you really believe in something, then you should be willing to stake your reputation on it. The rewards will surely follow.
I want to conclude today by thanking the many colleagues and friends whose support through the years allowed me to reach my goals and succeed in ways that I never imagined.
As well, the enduring love, patience and understanding of my family and particularly my wife Lorraine has made all the difference in the world and I am tremendously grateful for that.
And to all you deserving graduates out there, I wish you too much success and much happiness. Get out there. Make your mark and believe in the power of one.
Thank you very much indeed. Congratulations. Good luck and God bless.