“Canada’s really having a moment now,” says Stantec CEO Susan Reisbord.
Reisbord leads a company that is everywhere and nearly invisible at the same time. Its work involves “the stuff you don’t see,” says Reisbord, who last month took over as chief executive of Stantec Inc., the Edmonton-based engineering and consulting firm.
Tariffs, major infrastructure projects across Canada, data centres and the U.S. immigration crackdown — Stantec has dealt with all of them. Reisbord says the company is built on “balance across five verticals,” from roads and bridges to energy projects and water systems.
Reisbord calls it “a real luxury” to assume the top job of a company that traces its roots to 1954. And she plans to stay the course, even as her traditionally low-profile firm faces new public scrutiny over its data centre projects in Alberta and previous U.S. immigration contracts.
While the data centre debate grows, Reisbord sees no need for a new direction as she starts the job. It is “not really about changing; it’s continuing to lead inside the industry,” she says. She calls the company she took over “strong, stable, resilient.”
Reisbord, originally from Cincinnati, was pulled toward science. She earned a geology degree at the university there and a master’s degree in geochemistry at the University of Chicago, then found her way into environmental consulting.
As a scientist, she says, she loves projects that begin and end, and that are hard and challenging — “that is nectar.” She has always worked a lot, and there is no balance in a job like hers. “It’s about work-life blending. And so, I work a lot of hours, but a lot of it is because I love what I do.”
Reisbord arrived at Stantec in 2021 when it bought Cardno Inc., the infrastructure and environmental services firm she ran as CEO. She rose to chief operating officer of Stantec’s North America business, and on Oct. 1 took over from Gord Johnston, who held the job for eight and a half years and is now vice chair of the board.
The job comes with a debate over data centres in Alberta. Developers are proposing many of Canada’s data centres in the province, and Stantec is working on projects in and around Edmonton and Calgary. Residents are raising concerns, and city councils are weighing limits.
Reisbord confirms Stantec is on the team for the data centre outside Edmonton that Meta Platforms Inc. is building in Sturgeon County, a project worth more than $13 billion. Clark Builders and PCL Construction are on the same team.
Asked where the water for the Meta site will come from and where the used water will go, Reisbord did not say. She spoke instead about data centres and advanced manufacturing in general, which are “requiring very big changes” in water reuse in North America.
Reisbord then turned to Stantec’s own history with water recycling. The company was “pioneering” it in Southern California in the late 1990s and early 2000s, she says, turning wastewater into drinking water. But the idea “really didn’t get anywhere,” and climate change and demand from data centres have since made those projects “viable and advancing everywhere.” She did not address the community’s concerns directly.
Stantec’s name is also on a data centre proposal inside Edmonton. The company filed the application for Calgary-founded Walton Global Investments Ltd. to build data centres at the Edmonton Energy and Technology Park.
The City of Edmonton is reviewing the application, which asks it to change the park’s plan to make it possible to build data centres and the power plants that serve them.
While Stantec’s application is under review, Edmonton council is asking how the city could restrict data centres. On Oct. 28, it passed a motion to have city administration study how to regulate and restrict them. Ward Métis Coun. Ashley Salvador moved the motion. It passed by a majority of council, and a report is due back early in the new year.
Data centres fall under the city’s “general industrial land use category,” Salvador said, and “there isn’t really delineation or specificity around what a large-scale data centre constitutes.” Settling that definition is part of the work, along with the environmental effects and whether zoning has to change. From what Salvador has seen, more than 90 per cent of the data centres proposed across Canada are planned for Alberta.
One of the main concerns Salvador hears from residents is the cost. From the projections she has seen, she said, a single large data centre could add hundreds of dollars a year to people’s utility bills, which she called “alarming and concerning for folks to hear.”
Calgary data centre application
In Calgary, Stantec has filed another land use application for a data centre and power generation project, this one in the city’s northeast. The city’s file does not name the client.
Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas and four councillors want a pause on new rezoning applications for large data centres while the northeast application is under review.
Beyond the data centre controversy, Reisbord calls AI a productivity tool, and Stantec has put an agent to work on its own proposals, so they get done faster and cost less. The company puts governance and “belts and suspenders” around how its people use it. Management consultants had to pull back reports with hallucinations in them, she notes, and “you can’t do that with a bridge.”
Stantec’s U.S. work has also drawn controversy. Stantec and a business owned by the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin won two contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a joint venture.
The Oneida Nation’s business council said when it found out one of its divisions was involved with ICE, it pulled out of the contracts late last year. Stantec also pulled out. ICE’s violent immigration crackdown drew global outrage and condemnation from Oneida Nation. Stantec maintains it no longer has any contracts with ICE.
For what comes next, Reisbord sees growth in the business Stantec already has and “where the markets demand.” Its private, state, local and federal clients “all go through economic cycles at different times,” a key piece of Stantec’s “stability plan.”
Reisbord says climate change is opening up northern Canada. Water that was not navigable before can be now, which is a national defence issue, and mineral deposits that were not worth mining are becoming economic. A deep-water port at Grays Bay in Nunavut would support defence needs, bring all-weather roads and give mines a way to get minerals to market.
Stantec is seeing more activity in its northern offices, where it has “more people north of 60 than our competitors do.” Staff in Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Nunavut have worked closely with First Nations and are part of those communities.
Reisbord calls the responsibility for Stantec’s 34,000 employees an “important mantle,” and what keeps her up at night is “the safety of knowing that every one of them comes home safe.”
Reisbord, who loves Alberta for its “big skies, big ambition,” keeps an apartment in Edmonton and has not missed a Calgary Stampede since her first.
And she sees economic momentum across the country. “Canada’s really having a moment now.”
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