Status of Women committee  Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here today to share some of my personal experiences as a Canadian female leader. I do need to start with a couple of caveats, however. The first is that I personally have never been paid less for a job than any of the men who I have worked with.

Natural Resources committee  On the social side of things, I think back to the start of Fort McMurray, which of course was there many centuries ago, through when Great Canadian Oil Sands came, and then Syncrude, and then most recently, the latest kind of growth spurt in the mid-1990s and 2000s. It is a town that grows incrementally, so there are step changes.

Natural Resources committee  There are thousands of them and they're all white pickups.

Natural Resources committee  I'm so...[Inaudible—Editor]...I shouldn't have to answer that question.

Natural Resources committee  We have fleets of thousands of vehicles and most of them are with one particular manufacturer. But I can get back to you on the specific details.

Natural Resources committee  That they are.

Natural Resources committee  Back to Ms. Block's comment, I think from a government's perspective continuing with the implementation of responsible resource development is an important component, so that creates some certainty and creates some stability. The second point I would make is actually local to Fort McMurray, but is relevant.

Natural Resources committee  Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance is an alliance of 13 oil sands companies that I think actually just spoke to a lot of what Ms. Leslie and Mr. Leach were just speaking about around innovation. A natural part of research and development is failure; a natural part of research and development is learning.

Natural Resources committee  No.

Natural Resources committee  I think we enjoy the benefits of one of the strongest regulatory regimes in the world, and I think we try to be a good corporate citizen within that.

Natural Resources committee  No, we're a strong contributor to Canada. We're proud Canadians.

Natural Resources committee  It can be very challenging. I would say one of the things that we have learned over the years is that the approach to ask every Canadian to be as technologically up to date on the oil sands as some of the engineers who work for us is a bad approach. We tried that at first. It's a very complicated business, so explaining it in graphic detail doesn't work.

Natural Resources committee  Yes. I'll speak particularly to northeastern Alberta. Since our operations started in 1967, we've taken a very proactive approach, we think, along with Syncrude. I have to give Syncrude credit on the leadership there. They were the first company in the region to look very seriously at including the aboriginal people in their economic benefits.

Natural Resources committee  I couldn't comment on whether I agree on that particular statement or not. I apologize. It's not something I've studied long enough, but I can speak to the future of in situ. Part of the technology development either Suncor is doing on our own or through COSIA, Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance....

Natural Resources committee  Well, it's not $100 a tonne, that's for sure. But I would say that kind of number does impact your rate of return by 3% to 4%. For our shareholders at Suncor and our CEOs, it needs to be an 11% rate-of-return project in order for us to consider it. That's our threshold. As we look forward, if you have to account for that, then either you have to do a number of other things that reduce that impact down to 1% or 2%, or you have to do some other things around productivity and the supply chain—the steelmakers and others—that will actually improve your IRR, internal rate of return, to 15% so that you can account for that cost.