ENR’s senior editor of environment Pam McFarland recently spoke with Susan Reisbord, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Edmonton, Alberta-based global consultant Stantec, who will assume the roles of president and CEO on Oct. 1. She joined the firm in 2022 and is set to succeed Gord Johnston, who has been in the roles for eight years and will become board vice chairman.
Reisbord is an advisory board member of the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) Global Leadership Forum and a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development executive consultation group supporting its Blue Dot Network, which provides internationally recognized certifications for infrastructure projects that are environmentally and socially sustainable, resilient, transparent and economically efficient. The conversation has been edited for space and clarity.
ENR: Stantec has worked in the Arctic for quite a while and you said it is interested in continuing to develop projects in the Arctic region and in Canadian territories north of the 60th parallel north latitude. Please share more detail on that.
Susan Reisbord: About three years ago, shortly after I joined the company, I went to our White Horse office in the Yukon Territory, as part of a major geosciences conference, and it really hit me as part of that experience—particularly as an environmental scientist with an understanding of climate change impacts—that there were going to be more opportunities there. There would be mining opportunities that might not have been economical before, but because of climate change, you could now get to some of these resources, and it would actually be economical to mine them.
Also, there was plenty of discussion at the conference about how waters that were not navigable before at all, or at least for part of the year, are now navigable, and [what] that is going to mean for defense—not just for Canada, but for all of North America.
As a proudly Canadian-based company, there was not just a sense of opportunity, but also a sense of obligation because of new defense requirements that were going to happen and a responsibility to our staff of more than 60 who have worked there for up to 50 years. It’s not like somebody else’s community; it’s our community, and there were a lot of discussions about that.
Stantec also has an office in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, and we’re in Iqaluit in Nunavut. We have more than 100 employees north of the 60th parallel.
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ENR: When you say defense, can you explain how these projects will provide more safety and security?
Reisbord: The kinds of projects we’re doing include the wide variety of all of our vertical markets—our energy, resources and mining teams, as well as our environment team to ensure facilities can be built, our infrastructure and building teams to reinforce them and, of course, our water team. So, it’s really an all-of-Stantec positioning north of 60.
When it comes to defense, we’re part of Arctic Over the Horizon, which is modernizing Canada’s surveillance capabilities and strengthening the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). All of Stantec’s engineering and environmental services are being used for that work. The Canadian military has aging infrastructure in places such as Alert, Nunavut, the base that is closest to the North Pole, about 500 miles away. We’ve done infrastructure improvements there.
There’s a $40-billion strategic defense investment, with about $35 billion to defend, build and transform the north of Canada and about $10 billion in major projects already identified. So it’s not just talking about it; they are doing something about it.
ENR: With enormous interest in critical minerals, what is Stantec doing in that space?
Reisbord: We’re already working across the full life cycle of mining with regard to critical minerals, and not just in North America, but also globally. We don’t see demand lessening by any stretch for critical minerals. It is expected to double by 2040, and will triple for lithium in particular.
If you look at copper and all of the actual planned projects, if they were executed and online, we would still have a 25% deficit in our needs by 2035. So, there is nothing that suggests anything but tremendous tailwinds.
Our energy and resources team does all the environmental planning for mining projects–design with regard to mining, processing associated with that and support structures around the mines.
Related to the Florence copper mine in Arizona, what’s cool about that one is that it involves in-situ mining, so we’re avoiding some environmental impacts of the open pit approach. You don’t have blasting, hauling or crushing with in-situ and there is less water and energy demand. We did basic engineering related to upfront planning for reclamation and restoration to avoid or mitigate long-term impacts.
