Home, sweet home
Conklin residents move into their brand-new homes as the Cenovus Indigenous Housing Initiative continues.
When Grace Richards moved into a mobile home in Conklin, Alberta, she thought it would be temporary.
That was eight years ago – eight years without electricity, without running water, without indoor plumbing. “Very hard living,” she says. “Especially in the winter months.”
But this October, Grace moved into a brand-new house – two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and brand-new appliances.
She will no longer be getting her water from a rain barrel, relying on a propane tank to cook, or using an outhouse. She’s looked forward to moving in for months.
“Being able to turn on a light switch, being able to have a shower every day, having a fridge and a stove…things I took for granted in the past,” she says.
Her new home, in the Métis community of Conklin, is one of 200 houses being built as part of Cenovus Energy’s Indigenous Housing Initiative (IHI), our $50-million project that seeks to improve housing conditions within six Indigenous communities near our oil sands operations. The initiative is one way we work towards Indigenous reconciliation.
“We want to maintain great relationships with the communities we are working close to,” says Dustin Meek, Manager of Indigenous Business Development at Cenovus. “We heard loud and clear that housing is a crisis so part of being a good neighbour is listening and acting.”
Cenovus works closely with Indigenous communities near its operations to ensure they share in the benefits of resource development. Advancing Indigenous reconciliation means taking meaningful action and Indigenous economic reconciliation is a critical part of Cenovus’s sustainability governance, which is supported by the Board of Directors and Board Governance Committee and is also committed to safety, inclusion and diversity.
Providing housing for Indigenous communities is an important part of our broader sustainability commitments – and is an initiative that Cenovus is particularly proud of.
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LAST UPDATED: NOVEMBER 2024
Find out more about the launch of our $50 million Indigenous Housing Initiative.
Learn about our approach to Indigenous reconciliation.