Re: Resumption of Turnaround and Maintenance activities at Svncrude

After several long weeks of unplanned disruption, I am pleased to welcome our valued Building Trades contractors back to Syncrude.

Now that the threat to our facilities presented by the Fort McMurray wildfire has abated, it's time to return to work on our Project Wolverine Turnaround and other maintenance projects. We appreciate very much your members' patience as we manage our way through this unprecedented time.

Needless to say, things are very different now than when these projects were temporarily halted. For one, the entire Fort McMurray community has been displaced and only just now are residents beginning to return. Meanwhile, oil sands operators such as Syncrude that had to completely shut down our operations are beginning the road to recovery with the safe and gradual return-to-operations of our facilities.

For Syncrude, however, it also means, for the first time in our history, we are running two parallel commuter work programs. One is for usual commuters like your members and the other is for our regular employees who had to leave their community, and who may no longer have their Fort McMurray homes. For at least the next month, we've asked those employees assisting in our return-to-operations activities to also stay in camp and commute to work from the various places where they are temporarily living,

This change has created tremendous demand for the region's camp accommodations. It means, for example, that Syncrude must return the Mildred Lake Village to active service to house people who need rooms. Having stayed there myself recently, I know it isn't perfect. But it is safe, it is clean, it is convenient and we are working to bring it up to an even better standard. In fact, before anyone stays there, the camp will be fully inspected and its occupancy authorized by Alberta Health Services.