Ten People to Know | A roundup of top business, education and political leaders from Saskatchewan

Gordon Graham

Potash Development Director, BHP Billiton Canada Inc.

The cast of characters in the world’s biggest potash play has expanded. So have expectations of new salt mines being carved out of the prairie evaporite layer a kilometre underground, something that last happened in 1985. When the world’s largest mining company comes to town and starts organizing hockey games, you know change is afoot. For street-level cred, the company started the year by sponsoring the World Junior Hockey Championships in Saskatoon, the kind of thing mining companies are expected to do in these parts. “BHP Billiton is not just hoping to open a mine,” gushed the company website in January, “we want to start a Saskatchewan business.”

In fact, the company has stated the objective of having several potash mines. What are those, maybe $3 billion a pop? Pending government approval, new digs seem certain. BHP-B has rights to more than 7,000 square kilometres of the province and will spend $240 million to plumb exploratory shafts on its Jansen property. It also moved to acquire mining junior Athabasca Potash Inc. for $341 million, getting access to its Burr project. BHP’s point man for potash and senior executive in Saskatchewan is former Ekati diamond mine manager Gordon Graham.

Potash prices have come well off their 2008 altitudes of $1,000 a spot tonne, making it a logical time to get into a highly cyclical ballgame. Along with their Russian counterparts, Saskatchewan potash companies have traditionally met falling prices (see Bill Doyle, PotashCorp) by cutting back output. Analysts predict BHP Billiton will exercise similar restraint when its mines come into full production by perhaps 2015. Right now, it has a lot of digging to do.

Mayo Schmidt

President and CEO, Viterra Inc.

Mayo Schmidt can’t take all the credit for transforming the farmer-owned Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, the Mountain Equipment Co-op of prairie grain founded in the 1920s. But since his arrival as CEO in 2000, the weekend Ironman competitor has steered the storied company, long one of Canada’s largest agri-food enterprises, to the end of a marathon of painful restructuring that might have ended in bankruptcy.

The new corporate chapter that dawned in 2007 when the Regina-based company took over its larger competitor, Agricore United, and became Viterra (which means “life from the earth”) has now found running room. Global expansion has been the management mantra for nearly two decades and it is Schmidt, a one-time National Football League hopeful, who gets to try the big end play at last. Viterra bought Australia’s ABB Grain in a $1.4-billion bid last year, giving it access to harvests in two hemispheres as well as a doorway to Asia’s burgeoning market. Despite debt paydowns, the opening of a new deep-water port in South Australia and a surprisingly bad fourth quarter in 2009, the blue-green giant still has $800 million in its acquisition coffers. Heading eastward, meanwhile, Schmidt started the year by opening a new office in Geneva, Switzerland. Like the British Empire, Viterra seems destined to meet itself on the far side of the planet sometime very soon.

Hugh Wood

Chief Operating Officer, Vecima Networks Inc.

Contrary to nagging rumours that have dogged him ever since a moment of unguarded musing-aloud several years ago, Brad Wall has no plans to dump Crown corporations in a province where they are not only political capital, but have been breeding grounds for the most successful provincial industries, including both potash and uranium. It was in response to just such persistent fears that Hugh Wood penned an op-ed piece about his company, which sells network technology to provincial Crown corporation Sasktel. Prestige from the partnership allows Vecima to export its Saskatchewan-manufactured products worldwide. Outfits like Vecima are not the thin edge of the privatization wedge, Wood argued. Rather, they are a way to leverage the might of Crown corporations to do business outside the province, something that Crowncos cannot legally do on their own. Government money for startups is arguably a good thing – expect Wall, Boyd and company to do just that. But there would seem no happier way for the province to invest in Saskatchewan technology than by buying mature homegrown product ready for the open market.

Vianne Timmons

President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Regina

She may not want or deserve the responsibility, but many will now look to Vianne Timmons for leadership in rebuilding the First Nations University of Canada. FNUC – the inauspicious acronym perhaps hinted what was to come – has been mired in controversy since it opened its shining new headquarters on the University of Regina campus in 2003. With a board top-heavy with aboriginal politicians, its management has been characterized by closed-door meetings, shoddy financial reporting, allegations of fraud and misappropriation, whistle-blower dismissals, and stern censure by the Canadian university fraternity for violations of academic freedom. After years of intransigence and amid heavy student protests, the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations finally dumped the board en bloc after the province pulled its funding. Officially independent but federated under the U of R banner, the wild-card FNUC will remain president Timmons’ problem for some time to come. She has vowed not to leave stranded the students, who are the real victims of the management breakdown. Meanwhile, the ramifications of the crisis go beyond the arena of higher learning. The departing board members remain key players across the spectrum of aboriginal business. Will the FNUC fiasco lead to an era of increased transparency and a brighter, more economically integrated future for the next generation of First Nations business leaders?

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