Welcome to Drumbeats, the must -listen -to podcast
which explains why Indigenous partnerships are
the key to securing successful outcomes in natural
resource and infrastructure investment in Canada.
I'm Mark McNachin, my co -host Robert Brantner,
joined today by Nicole Burke -Boucher, CEO and
co -owner of the Boucher Group. one of Canada's
largest privately owned Indigenous companies
with close to $200 million in annual revenues
and nearly 1 ,500 employees operating in Alberta's
oil sands region. Nicole and her colleagues have
built something remarkable. from a single bulldozer
and a devastating first year loss to a company
that's been working with Canadian natural resources
for 28 years, maintaining zero default performance
while employing Indigenous workers from over
100 different First Nations across the country.
In December 2024 alone, she received personally
the Order of Canada and collectively the ExxonMobil
International Diverse Supplier Award. A global
recognition that the Boucher Group, earned by
competing successfully, gains thousands of international
contractors on service quality, safety, and operational
performance. This conversation reflects resilience
and ambition. Nicole is one of the most successful
entrepreneurs in Canada. She's the CEO of this
business that she's built with her partner. And
she is an Indigenous female. She proves. Indigenous
-led businesses succeed on merit, alliances,
and good partnership, which is good business
for everyone. Let's dive in. Nicole Burke Boucher,
the CEO of the Boucher Group. Thanks so much
for joining us, taking the time. Thanks for having
me. Yes, wonderful to have you here. A great
entrepreneur from Alberta in Canada. And your
story, Nicole, is, I think, inspiring for all
Canadians and I'm sure Indigenous people around
the world. So we're very, very pleased to have
you on our podcast. So Rob, why don't you kick
things off? Sure, Nicole, maybe just start. You
talk to us about where you are today. Where are
you speaking to us from? Oh, yes. The sun is
shining and I'm sitting in my office, which is
the Boucher office on the Fort McKay Reserve.
It's called the Business Incubator Park and it's
for their local entrepreneurs. And we have finally
had the privilege of building our very own building
about three years ago. And so I'm just looking
out at our yard right now and all the snow. It's
been rather cold up here, but we, yeah, just
looking at our fleet of equipment right now.
Great. And can you help position that for our
audience over here in London and Europe who probably
haven't had the opportunity to visit your neighborhood?
Fort Mackay itself is one of six First Nation
communities in the heart of oil sands in northeastern
Alberta within Canada. And you grew up not too
far from there. Tell us a little bit about...
where you were born. Sure, yeah. I was actually
born in the Northwest Territories, so even more
north. from here. So Northwest Territories is
just north of Alberta in a small community called
Fort Smith. And my parents raised me and three
sisters on the trap line in the Wood Buffalo
National Park, which is in between Alberta and
Northwest Territories for the first five years
of my life. And then we moved into a small community,
Fort Smith, to go to school. And then later on,
when my dad was offered a position within the
oil sands industry in a larger city, called Fort
McMurray, just south of Fort Smith. He relocated
our family, very young family, down to Fort McMurray,
and he took a job with a company called Syncrude
Canada, which was mining in early mining stages
within the Wood Buffalo area within northeastern
Alberta. And I'm curious about this raised on
the trap lines. Just explain what you mean by
that. Indigenous people within Canada in our
early days, that's how we made a living is living
on a trap line and trapping the animals. And
we would sell portions, usually the furs from
the animals. And that's how we would. you know,
bring in revenue and income as a family. And
so as that way of life started to go away, many
of our Indigenous people, my father included,
really tried to hang on to that wonderful traditional
way of life and still raise their families. Today,
there's very few families that actually make
a living on the trap line because, you know,
the fur trade is just non -existent anymore and
it's really hard to get money from it. So many
of us practice traditional activities just because
it's what we enjoy. As Indigenous people, we
love to be out in the lands. We love to be within
nature. It's kind of what brings us back, rooted
into our communities. And, you know, today my
husband and I and our children practice our traditional
way of life and we have our own trapline. Okay.
And what sort of animals are found along your
trapline? You know, Canada's a huge country.
Oh, yeah. So in the Wood Buffalo National Park,
buffalo. And they're very difficult to come by.
They're almost extinct. So a lot harder to come
by. So when you do, it's a very sacred moment,
actually, to be able to see them. We have a lot
of moose. We have caribou. We have a lot of deer.
We have rabbits. And the list goes on and on
up here. There is a lot. Wow. So I remember growing
up in Manitoba, and I used to go to Riding Mountain
National Park. And there's buffalo. up there
on the plateau. And to see those animals is always
beautiful. And whenever, you know, from a kid,
we go out to see them without having the deep
appreciation that an indigenous person has for
what those animals mean. But when you see them,
even without that, you feel that there's something
very powerful and life -giving when you see them.
You just think, tread carefully. Not because
you're afraid of them, but because of... They
represent something. I think life -giving is
a great way of putting it because years ago when
we lived on a trap line and that was your way
of living, every animal that you came across
provided so much to the family. So whether it
was the fur for the warmth or the meat for the
food, but you didn't put any animal to waste.
And even today, when we go to look to hunt, As
a family, you know, in our culture, you take
exactly only what you need. And you also share
with the rest of the community. You share with
your elders. You share with your other family
members. So you may have one or two hunters within
the family, but they definitely spread the wealth
around amongst all families. It's such a beautiful
part of the country. And my daughter taught for
a few years in Hay River. Nice. Not too far from
there. I got the chance to visit there a few
times and was always struck by the beauty. Can
you talk a little bit about your education and
how did you end up starting running Boucher Group?
Sure. As I said, my father moved us down to Fort
McMurray, and it's interesting, I kind of chuckle
when I hear his story, because he ran a taxi
service with his family when he moved us into
Fort Smith, a very small northern community,
and he was called by Sincrude, and he tells the
story not once, not twice, but three times. Syncrude
Canada at the time was standing up their oil
sands operations and they really wanted to work
with Indigenous people from the region, from
the First Nations around them, in order to build
skills and help provide for communities. And
so they called him a few times. And at the very
end, he decided to come. And he says, I decided
to move south with my daughters to the big city
of Fort McMurray because I really just wanted
to provide them with a different way of life
that wasn't as hard as how he had it raised on
a trapline trying to make ends meet. And really
survival was what you put in physically out in
the cold every day. And so he wanted to give
us an opportunity. for education. So he moved
the four girls and my mom down to the Fort McMurray
area. And Fort McMurray was home and it's been
home since. I went to elementary and high school
here in Fort McMurray. And then a little later
on. I was able to relocate to his home community,
Fort Chippewan. Fort Chippewan is on the lakes
of Apabasca. It's a fly -in only community on
the Canadian Shield. It's beautiful. And that's
where his First Nation was from. And so my parents
relocated up there, back up north, in between
Fort Smith and Fort McMurray. And I relocated
with them and worked a bit and upgraded my high
school education and then moved to Edmonton,
Alberta. to take some computer classes. I ended
up with a diploma in computer information systems
and then moved back to Fort McMurray and started
my career as a student within Syncrude Canada,
where my father used to work, in their public
affairs department. And that was my first kind
of brush of working. right within Oilsense and
later on started my own consulting company where
I provided stakeholder database solutions to
industry companies in the area as a way to contact
key Indigenous and governmental stakeholders
with information about their projects. And then
that kind of grew into eventually what worked
out to be a full -time job back in oil sands
with a company called Shell Canada. And within
Shell's company, I was an advisor in their external
affairs department. And during that time, my
husband -to -be, David, who's from the community
of Fort Mackay, First Nation, worked at the same
site. And that's how we met each other. And we
both had very full -time jobs. And David happened
to have a very small company called Candave Contracting
on the side with a couple of pieces of equipment
that he ran at a new exploration site that was
called Canadian Natural Resources Horizon Project
just north of Fort McKay. So we were across the
river on this great big site called Albion run
by Shell Canada. I worked directly for Shell
and he worked for Fort McKay Group of Companies.
Work across the river at the Canadian National
Site through his two little pieces of equipment
started to become more and more full time. And
I found myself diving into the books, into the
safety side of things, into the payroll side
of things. And work just became very full time
for both of us. So we had our full time jobs
during the day, weekends and evenings. And we
had children became also very full time. So we
made the very hard decision, as entrepreneurs
have to do along their journey, to just jump
in with both feet. And we gave up our full time
positions. And we thought, you know, we talked
to ourselves about what is the absolute worst
that could happen if we did this. And we figured
the worst that could happen is we'd fall flat
on our face. And we felt we were fairly employable.
So we would go get jobs of equal back. And you
know what, we've never looked back since. So
what years are we talking about when you made
that decision? 2004. 2004 and 2005 were the first,
the big winter season. And winter season was
really important to our business because that's
where exploration was done. Because you have
to have the cold weather to freeze down winter
roads to move drill rigs in to be able to drill
for the materials to then assess the level of
bitumen within the ground. Right. What a story.
A few questions going back. Syncrude Canada,
when you talked about your father and they're
looking to engage with the local community, was
Syncrude Canada, I guess it was one of the few
enlightened corporations in those days who knew
the importance of working with the Indigenous
people? Yes, they definitely took a lead role
in our region. And of course, Syncrude is now
Suncor. energy across Canada. But they definitely
always took a leadership role with working with
Indigenous people and Indigenous communities.
It was a priority for them when it was a priority
for nobody else. So we're very lucky. Yes. And
just fast forwarding to, you're talking about,
you know, in the winter, that's when you can
bring in the heavy equipment and the drill rigs.
Does the drilling also take place in the winter
or it's set up for the... summer and then the
drilling takes place in the summer when perhaps
the land is a bit easier to... Oh, it takes place
in the winter. Yeah. So we have these condensed
exploration programs that we have to do because
the land out here is so soft. There's a lot of
muskeg areas. So you wait for the winter. You
actually put water on the roads and freeze down
the lines. And then you open up the roads and
you build pads for the drill rigs to then come
behind you and sit on. And then they sit there
and drill for three, four months in the winter
and get what they need to then go back in the
summer and to analyze and assess. Wow. What a
story. And I'm just curious what became of that
exploration site at that time. We did so many.
Yeah, we did. Well, CNRL now is, I think, the
largest. producer in Canada. We're still on the
site. We've been on the site since day one. It's
been over 25 years we've been there. Dave's had
his company 28 years ago. He started it. And
then I joined a few years after he started it.
And upon joining the organization, Dave signed
over half the company to me right from the get
-go. So it's very much been a true partnership,
Boucher, 50 % owners each. and a lot of challenges
along the way. Yes. And not only are you one
of the great entrepreneurs in Canada and your
husband as well, you built a very sizable business.
I think it's 170 million plus in terms of revenue.
You were also a woman and indigenous at a time
that was not exactly the role model for having
a successful career. So you've obviously demonstrated
to a number of people, Don't judge before you
see. 100%. Yeah, I say that when I entered in
the oil sands area and took on this role, I didn't
even know what the difference was between each
piece of equipment. So it was a huge learning
curve for me, one that I was... you know bound
and determined to figure out it did not come
with a lot of listening learning and diving in
and each day you know brought its its own challenges
but equally as so its own learnings and it was
very rewarding and always has been each day is
very rewarding for me as an entrepreneur i learned
a lot from both My husband, David, and my father
entered the business too. So he eventually left
his term with Synchro Canada and came to work
for us directly. And so between the two of them
being longtime operators themselves, I was just
like a sponge taking it all in out there, putting
on steel toe boots and a hard hat, which I had
never done before. And then just jumping in with
both feet and doing what I can to fill the gaps
and help out. till I finally established myself
as more of a CEO position within the organization.
It didn't happen overnight. A lot of challenges
along the way, but just taking it all in and
learning and a completely 100 % self -taught
in business. Fantastic. Give us an idea of what
the business looks like today. Yes, exactly.
Yeah, I'd love to. We just closed the 2025 year
at just over $200 million and just under 1 ,400
team members within our organization. We have
a diverse business of three companies. So we
continue our work on that civil side of things
with Boucher Contracting, which is our road maintenance
and civil projects business. And then along the
way, we stood up a business called Boucher Site
Services, which is our integrated facility maintenance
company. So we have a lot of tradespeople working
within buildings on sites, helping with the buildings
maintenance and doing project work as well, like
dorm renovations for the camps up here. And then
more recently, we started a third division, which
we call Boucher Logistics. We have bus drivers
working at site. We do low bedding services for
different clientele. We have 39 % Indigenous
employees. And the thing I'm most excited about
are the status. I'm most excited about is of
our just under 1 ,400 employees, 41 % of our
leaders are Indigenous. We represent over 99
Indigenous communities across Canada. So I know
we're about 400 pieces of heavy equipment. And,
you know, we spend a lot of time in community
giving back as well, which I'm also very proud
of. Very, very impressive figures. But as you
said, you've worked very hard over the years
from the get -go. And I think the first couple
of years were a bit challenging. And you had
talked about, you know, what do you do if it
doesn't work? Do you want to talk a little bit
about that? Because I think it's important for
our listeners. You know, all entrepreneurs know,
you know, it's not an easy road. It looks like
it in the end when you're successful and people
forget about the hardship and sacrifice along
the way. Would you share a bit more of that,
please? 100%. Yeah. The first year of business,
when I said we both quit our jobs and dived in,
we barely seen our kids. Dave missed Christmas
that year. your chief cook and bottle washer
for sure as as entrepreneurs you do everything
to save money you're trying to learn the business
you're trying to learn the commercial side of
things what a contract means how do you get within
a contract how do you get more work how do you
manage your expenses you don't pay them out right
away we didn't have a full -time bookkeeper we
worked extremely hard we were exhausted we closed
our year end in march at the time was our year
end and we were on we had gone married through
that first year and we were on our honeymoon
in Mexico and I knew our year -end was coming
through and I was so excited because we had such
a challenging first year and I knew how hard
we all worked. And so I said, well, I'm going
to go to the computer and log in to see how we
did because the auditors were sending me the
results. And I just scrolled to the bottom because
I didn't know enough on how to read financial
statements, but I knew the bottom line would
tell me. And there was a great big red minus
$250 ,000 at the very bottom. And my heart sank.
And I just thought, what did we do wrong? Right.
So we ended up a very hard year. We thought we
were doing really good month on month. Our accountant
or bookkeeper at the time was telling us we were.
And we ended up at a $250 ,000 loss. Wow. And
that's in 1999 or $2 ,000, right? Yeah, that
was in the 2005 year. Yeah, $250 ,000. So you
know what? I think that first year of loss taught
me one huge thing, and that was discipline. And
it was discipline around growth, discipline around
knowing your own business. I think I went in
thinking, oh, well, the bookkeeper knows the
numbers. I don't have to worry about that. And
the mechanics know the maintenance. I don't have
to worry about that. But the truth is, as an
entrepreneur, you have to make every aspect of
your business your business, right? You have
to know a little bit about all of it. And you
have to, you know, follow for me as a female,
I've learned to follow my intuition, to be honest
with you, because most often than not, it is
completely always dead on and right. And every
time I see myself veering away from that and
trying to live in a different world, like as
an Indigenous female in a construction environment.
I spent the first few years trying to measure
up and be like the guys, the construction guy.
And it just wasn't serving me. I was struggling.
And it's really when, as a female, I just leaned
into what I brought to the table, which I think
is that discipline. It was the empathy. It was
the intuition. And the more I just started to
listen to myself and go with it. It was a little
against the grain in kind of a guy's construction
world, but it's worked out well at the end of
the day, I think. Quite clearly. So I'm quite
proud of what we've built along the way. We should
probably go back and interview some of those
long -serving employees to see how they've seen
the leadership evolve in the company. And boy,
maybe they underestimated what would happen.
That is something. And what a surprise, though.
You're on your break. You've worked hard for
the year. And you thought in the middle of your
nice end of your honeymoon vacation, oh, I'll
just go check the numbers. So hopefully you were
able to at least celebrate and overcome that
loss somehow and enjoy the few days you had left
on the warm weather before you came back to rebuild
the business, right? Right, exactly. We managed.
Yes, great. And I suppose you don't get through
periods of financial loss or other setbacks without
some important partners and supports along the
way. Have you had some key partners who've helped
make the business as successful as it's become?
Yeah, most definitely. We're quite lucky to have
Fort McKay First Nation and their group of companies,
which earlier employed my husband, David. uh
support us along the way they helped us uh in
any way they could a specific gentleman by the
name of jim carbry and of course at the time
there was a chief by the name of chief jim boucher
and together they were a bit of a team building
the fort mckay group up on its own at all the
oil sands sites here. But they definitely lent
a hand. They were our fuel provider for all of
our equipment. And so they allowed us to go extra
months without paying them, coming into that
first lost year, in order to kind of gain our
revenue back up. And then alongside them was
this phenomenal company called Finning Canada.
And they provided us all of our yellow iron,
our heavy gear. We're still with both today,
but Finning did the same thing. They allowed
us to spread out our payments amongst several
months in order for us to get caught up. And
then we had a local bank, the Alberta Treasury
Branch, step in. And so those three partners
really got us by that. coming out of that really
hard year they were able to really help us turn
things around and give us a little leeway we
never asked for anything for free we just asked
that you know can you give us an extra couple
months to pay you and they they they were able
to do that and so we kind of went back in and
learned what we had done wrong and you know there
was a lot of expenses that we didn't track po's
against and so it was like i said it was a really
hard lesson but with the right partners and then
i have to say partners are we consider our clients
our partners you know we started at cnrl and
we're still canadian natural resources at the
horizon site and 28 years later and we're still
at that site same goes for sunk or energy and
imperial oil we're still at all their sites so
it's really nice it's really nice to be able
to see your clients as partners as well And is
the business focused around oil sands sites?
Is that your specialty or is there enough work
or do you see branching out beyond that, those
types of? The business has definitely organically
grown through the oil sands clients and also
the city of Fort McMurray through what we call
the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. We've
been able to do road maintenance services for
them as well, predominantly within our rural
communities. And then on a growth. We would like
to grow the integrated facility maintenance side
of the business outside of Wood Buffalo. Last
year, we were just able to get a footprint in
the Edmonton, Alberta area through facility maintenance,
through EPCOR Energy, and also with the government
directly. So we are doing some smaller facility
maintenance work right now in the Edmonton area.
And we'll continue to grow the civil projects
end because there is a lot of work to be done
still here in Wood Buffalo on the civil. end,
especially when you take a mine site to closure
and you look at the amount of reclamation activities
that have to be done. So I think we're pretty
anchored in with Buffalo on the civil end, but
I think there's a lot of opportunity on a facility
maintenance end to grow across Canada, maybe
even one day. If we come back to something you
talked about earlier about bringing your own
intuition and women's intuition and your skills
and experience that you had in the business.
close to 1 ,500 employees, 40 % Indigenous, close
to 100 First Nations from across the country.
How do you translate some of those values? And
I've heard you mention before seven sacred teachings
in today -to -day operational performance. Can
you talk a little bit about the culture of the
organization? Because that's what makes business
a success, right? You don't earn your revenue
without having something unique that differentiates
you. 100%. And I will say for the first half
of our life as a business, it still was learning
and survival and gaining ground and gaining market
share. And then this interesting time came for
us as Indigenous entrepreneurs along the same
time as Truth and Reconciliation was starting
to really stand up throughout Canada. where we
had this phenomenal opportunity to embrace our
Indigenous culture and bring it within the business.
I think it was something we probably already
did, but we just didn't label it. And so we decided
to start with the seven sacred teachings. And
in our culture, it's the seven sacred teachings
or the seven grandfather teachings and their
virtues that through animals are passed down.
by generations and in our culture we talk about
seven generations before and seven generations
after and we pass down these teachings and so
we decide to bring the teachings into the organization
as a bit of a foundation for how we operate our
business so we have teachings such as the wolf
teaching the wolf goes with humility and you
know it in our business it's important to stay
humble It's important to stay grounded in community.
It's important to never forget about who you
are and where you came from and the traditions
that you carry as Indigenous people. So we brought
that within the business. And then there are
other teachings such as courage and truth and
honesty. And so that became kind of a guiding
principle system for our business. And that really
is how we've always delivered our business anyways,
right, is through honesty, through truth, through
trust, transparency, integrity. So it was so
wonderful to be able to bring our culture in
to something that we were already doing and start
to communicate with our non -Indigenous employees
what it means. And I think it's created this
great work environment where people feel like
they have a larger purpose than just working
in the oil sands. But there is a larger purpose
at play there. Yes. Thank you to Nicole Burke
-Boucher for sharing your insights with us. And
thank you for viewing and listening. Mark your
calendars for the upcoming 2026 Summit taking
place on the 8th of April. Be sure to share,
subscribe, and leave a review on your favorite
podcast channel. Thanks for listening to Drumbeats.
Until next time.