Two tales of one city
Brian Hutchinson, National Post
Published: Saturday, April 01, 2006
It's a Catch-22: Fort McMurray is booming, thanks to high oil prices and the unprecedented development sweeping its rich oil sands deposits. But the city can't keep up with the growth. Infrastructure is overburdened. Twenty per cent of its population has no fixed address. In the first of a three-part series, the National Post investigates the controversial solution: urban work camps.
FORT McMURRAY, Alta. - They both came from Cape Breton, lured by the jobs. Above all, the money. Their plans were the same: find work, which is not difficult in this northern boomtown, perched on the edge of one of the world's largest oil deposits.
The similarities end there.
The future is still wide open for Kevin Thomas, 41. He arrived here 10 weeks ago, leaving behind a wife and 12-year-old son in Sydney, N.S. A bus driver, Mr. Thomas landed a job in the oil sands 48 hours after stepping off the airplane.
Two days later, he quit. A Tuesday. He found a better job on the Wednesday.
Mr. Thomas lives with 1,400 other men inside a work camp that's built right on top of a massive new oil sands project, 80 kilometres north of Fort McMurray. He drives an employee shuttle bus, and makes twice the money he earned back in Cape Breton. He's content, but lonely. It's his first time away from home. He misses his family, and singing with his church choir. He misses the sea. Camp life is hard that way, especially for the married men.
Trevor Scott Fraser is about the same age as Mr. Thomas. A journeyman pipe fitter, he landed in Fort McMurray several years ago, and found work right away. He's single. He lived in a camp outside of town. The money poured in. And he spent all of it.
Mr. Fraser developed a bad cocaine habit. Too much boredom, no solid plan for the future. The drugs took over his life; he stopped working at his trade, and began dealing crack. And then he was busted.
This week, in a Fort McMurray courtroom, Mr. Fraser pleaded guilty to trafficking, and was sentenced to three years in prison. He seemed relieved; Mr. Fraser had avoided this day in court for months, and had racked up a long list of related offences: failure to appear, breach of probation, failure to comply with a court order.
On Monday, Mr. Fraser stood before a judge and insisted that he was finished with cocaine. "Six months of drugs made a mess of my life," he said. "My brain is finally free."
Mr. Thomas and Mr. Fraser represent the good and the bad of a huge itinerant army: 12,000 men and women, workers without permanent homes in Fort McMurray. The town's total population was 61,000 last year.
They are members of the "shadow" population: Tradesmen who live in official work camps at the oil sands; burger flippers making $14 an hour and living clandestinely in illegal basement apartments; the 450 homeless men and women in Fort McMurray, the ones who sleep in shelters or bedraggled tent settlements on the edge of town, next to the river.
The shadow population grows every month; it already represents almost 20% of the population of Wood Buffalo, the municipality that includes Fort McMurray and the oil sands. It's common for those who fall into this category to make $10,000 a month. Some settle into the routine and the camp lifestyle. Others bounce from one job, one style of accommodation, to another.
Brian Hutchinson, National Post
Published: Saturday, April 01, 2006
Mr. Thomas would like to put down roots and become part of the local community. The trouble is housing. There is simply not enough of it in Fort McMurray, and the shortage is causing serious problems for everyone. The city is bursting at the seams; it can't keep up with the 8% annual population growth, the equivalent of about 13 newcomers each day.
There's no slowing down, either. Spurred by high oil prices, energy companies are scrambling to maximize their oil sands developments. New, multi-billion-dollar plants are now being built to harvest and process deposits.
Alberta's oil sands cost plenty to develop, and the cost of production is much greater than conventional crude. But oil at US$60 a barrel is very lucrative, whether it is pumped straight from the ground, or mined from open pits and extracted from sand and rock.
There's no end in sight. New production plants are being built to last 40, 50, 60 years. The deposits are so vast that the harvested resources represent just a dime-sized dot on this piece of newsprint.
Longstanding residents of Fort McMurray appreciate the wealth and career opportunities that oil sands development has brought to the area. Those fortunate to have settled here a decade ago, when the municipality's population was 33,000, have seen the value attached to their homes skyrocket.
It's a seller's market, but with such a young population -- the average age here is just 31 -- few people are ready to leave. A modest, detached bungalow in Fort McMurray costs around $400,000. Narrow mobile homes start at $300,000. Two-bedroom apartments rent for $1,200 a month, and up. Good luck finding a space. The vacancy rate in Fort McMurray is precisely zero. The city needs 6,000 new housing units and while large condominium towers are going up everywhere, there aren't nearly enough apartments to go around.
Doctors and police officers are reluctant to move here; salaries offered to municipal workers are above the provincial average but are still considered inadequate. Teachers come and go. The annual staff turnover inside the local public school system is almost 30%.
Infrastructure is lacking. Fort McMurray needs more roads, plus new bridges, recreation and health-care facilities. But the housing crunch means the municipality must fork out a special premium for new projects. Most construction workers in Wood Buffalo are paid cost-of-living allowances of $130 a day; these are added into project tenders and are passed from contractors to the municipality, and, ultimately, to local taxpayers.
Paying workers a housing allowance can add millions of dollars to the final cost of an infrastructure project. Yet the extra money does not guarantee that people will show up for work, because there's simply no room for them to live. Construction delays are, therefore, commonplace.
Brian Hutchinson, National Post
Published: Saturday, April 01, 2006
Desperate to solve the problem, Wood Buffalo's municipal council decided last week to steal a page from the oil industry's playbook, and invite into Fort McMurray "project specific accommodations."
An urban work camp, in other words; the first in Fort McMurray history, and only the second in Canada (Yellowknife has one). The camp will house 300 construction workers and will sit directly beside a $114-million recreation centre project, to be built near the bustling downtown core. Construction begins soon.
Housing the construction workers on site will save the city an estimated $8-million in cost-of-living allowances. The idea required a municipal zoning amendment, which was controversial. Twenty-three taxpayers spoke against the amendment at a recent council meeting; only five voiced approval. Regardless, the motion to amend passed, 8-2.
Wood Buffalo councillor John Vyboh opposed the amendment. He doesn't want hundreds of construction workers living in trailers downtown. Not at all. "Rowdyism" is just one concern, he says. "We've been trying to change our image as a work-camp town, a fun place to work where you can make good money but where you don't dare bring your family," says Mr. Vyboh.
He fears that council has "opened Pandora's box." He predicts that other developers will now propose the establishment of urban camps for their own workers.
The shadow population, he notes, pay no local taxes. They crowd the roadways, and use over-burdened facilities. "Old timers don't like the way the community is heading," he insists. "Its character has changed."
The pressures and social costs associated with the municipality's unsustainable population growth and the deterioration of services have drawn unprecedented media attention, in Canada, the United States and abroad. Most reporters who travel here seem to focus on "unfortunate stereotypes," complains Melissa Blake, Mayor of Wood Buffalo. "There's now a perception that our workforce is swamped with drug and alcohol abuse. It's unfounded."
Drug offences fell 21.3% in Fort McMurray last year. But homicides, assaults and sexual assaults increased 25.6% over 2004, according to the local RCMP. Theft, break and enters, and property damage jumped 7.9%.
The statistics don't indicate which segment of the population is responsible for the increase in crime. But long-time residents here blame the shadow population, especially itinerants who arrive, make some quick cash, and then go on wild benders, starting inside Fort McMurray's bars. Crack is widely available; it's sold in parking lots downtown, and, police have alleged, inside certain oil sands work camps.
Sober, serious-minded family men such as Kevin Thomas pose no threat to local residents, yet they aren't exactly welcomed with open arms when they come in from the camps for a day of shopping.
"We're not seen as part of the community," says Mr. Thomas, sitting inside his work camp's cafeteria. "Once in a while I'll go to the Wal-Mart in Fort McMurray, spend an hour there, and then come straight back. It doesn't feel like home."
Many townsfolk seem to like it that way. "I wish more of the guys in the camps would just stay away," says one young female server at the Keg Bar and Grill, a busy steak joint in downtown Fort McMurray. "We're already packed every night. The last thing we need is more of them coming in here and drinking and then getting hauled away after last call."
Urban work camps? "No, no, no," she says. "It's a bad idea."
But it's one whose time has come. There is no alternative, says Mayor Blake, because the next five years will see an increase in local infrastructure projects. Better roads, more bridges, more apartment towers. These will require thousands more workers. They will have to live somewhere.
"Five more years," she promises. "Then things will become stable again."
By then, Kevin Thomas hopes he will have left his work camp, perhaps for a proper house in town. He yearns for Cape Breton, where his family has lived for generations, but there's no future there, not for his boy. It's over. "I think I can see all of us here," he says.
Mr. Thomas will return to Cape Breton at Easter, for a brief visit. He's still debating whether to ask his wife and son to pack up and join him for the return journey west.
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