People used to say “I work in the tech industry”, but now that phase is heard less frequently because every industry is becoming the tech industry. That has become evident by the fact that almost any business/organization that is still operating during the COVID-19 pandemic is using tech, whether it be third-party applications, Skip the Dishes and Zoom, or applications made in-house. Oil and gas is no different.
When the price of oil and gas dropped in 2014 the industry had to find a way to extract in a more cost effective manner. And out of the woodwork came companies using third-parties to onboard autonomous vehicles to reduce human power, leverage machine learning to improve predictive maintenance and precision drilling, and using VR to improve training and site safety. Evolutions like this are natural progress, we don’t see typists in office spaces anymore and over the last century we have seen an increase in robots in assembly lines to lower cost. So what does this rapid evolution mean for the worker in Alberta?
Well, the answer depends on the environment we create. A tremendous amount of engineers are retooling into data science and machine learning. They are able to do this through courses at organizations like Lighthouse Labs or the newly minted Data Science program at the University of Calgary. The challenge for them is after they finish there are little jobs available to them in Alberta. And having spoken with individuals retooling, they know the job they left won’t come back, but they could help the resource industry in other ways with their new skillset.
How do we create the jobs?
So we have the talent and we have the customer, how do we create the jobs? We have innovators who are developing applications, they just need to grow their product and get it to market. To Calgary's credit, organizations like Platform and Start-up Calgary provide amazing resources, but we need to encourage investment, and Alberta still lacks programs that encourage angel investors.
Unfortunately, lowering taxes does little to encourage growth since early startups aren't earning revenue to pay taxes. Providing immediate cash up front through grants or tax credits (like the film industry does) will encourage growth and pay for itselves in the income tax from new employees. Investor tax credits worked well in jurisdictions like Oregon to Ontario.
Government investments in Transmountain and Keystone XL provide a tremendous opportunity for our province. However, as the world regroups after COVID-19, it doesn’t matter how much we invest in oil and gas projects and pipelines. If we don’t support tech innovation and startups all the jobs that can support energy projects will go to a jurisdiction that does. And if we provide incentives to invest in tech startups in Alberta - that doesn’t pick winners or losers - we will help create new oil and gas jobs, while spurring growth in other sectors. There is no reason we can’t have our cake and eat it too in Alberta.
Graham Sucha
-Former MLA, Past Vice President of the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region, spent the last year working for tech not-for-profits in Alberta-