Interview with Peter ter Weeme

A long and winding road has lead Peter ter Weeme to his current role as Chief Social Purpose Officer and VP, Player Experience at British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC). We talk about some of the steps he took along the way, and his passion for the #SocialPurpose movement.

Watch: https://youtu.be/nYgVTNyzgSI

Unedited Transcript.

Jim Allan: Peter ter Weeme.

Peter ter Weeme: Jim Allan, how are you?

Jim Alllan: Right, I'm good, how are you?

Peter ter Weeme: I'm excellent.

Jim Allan: Right away, I think you've broken two records by being here on the program. He who has traveled the longest from Kamloops, BC, and maybe not directly, but I'm still gonna take it,

Peter ter Weeme:  take the win

Jim Allan: …and the person with the longest current job title, yeah. Chief Social Purpose Officer and Vice President Player Experience for the BCLC, British Columbia Lottery Corporation. But I didn't have you pegged as a big gambler. This is gambling new to your life, is it?

Peter ter Weeme: It is, I work for a gambling corporation, but that doesn't necessarily, interestingly enough, we have a lot of people that are not gamblers that work for the company, but they really like the fact that we are the largest non-tax source of revenue to the province, and that money goes into healthcare and education and arts and culture, and so that's what motivates a lot of people.

Jim Allan: And Kamloops, I love it out there. They were just talking to me before we started, because I ski, and I was out at Sun Peaks, which is, you gotta go through Kamloops to get there. Now, I always say, I love it out there, Kelowna, Coldstream, Lake Country, I always say that I'd move out there in a heartbeat if I won the lottery. And then I thought, wait a second, I know someone that works for a lottery. Maybe I'll talk to, oh, okay.

Peter ter Weeme: Boom, boom.

Jim Allan: So I know, you're all ethical and stuff, so that was a test. So did you create the social purpose position, or did they recruit you? Did you see an ad, and did you apply?

Peter ter Weeme: It came about as follows. The board of directors, there was a new board of directors that was brought in about four years ago, and as part of, they engaged in a strategic planning exercise together with the executive, and it was brought forward that BCLC should transition into a social purpose company, and they needed somebody to do that work, and so they took what was formerly the VP of communications and CSR, or corporate social responsibility job, which existed. That person had left, and they recasted as the VP of social purpose and stakeholder engagement. However, about five months after I started in that role, we went through a reorg, and I got a bunch of new responsibilities, and my title changed to chief social purpose officer and VP player.

Jim Allan: So after you started.

Peter ter Weeme: Yeah.

So this is from the, I've done some research now, so from the announcement, quote, Peter's professional experience spans the world of corporate government and non-profit clients in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has lived and worked in Canada, the Netherlands, and India, where he has advised companies and organizations on a range of values-based issues. He has also developed various campaigns and initiative focused around issues such as climate action, conservation, public health, and diversity and inclusion. I'm out of breath. That sounds so impressive. Now you strike me as a guy who just kind of, is not afraid of just pulling up stakes and just kind of going for it.

Peter ter Weeme: I've done that.

Jim Allan: And your whole career has been evidence of that. So way back when you worked, I think Communique right?

Peter ter Weeme: Yep.

Jim Allan: We weren't there together, but McGrath and Associates, which I sort of knew you a little bit, I met you maybe. These don't even appear on your longish resume anymore. About that time, you decided to leave it all behind and go get your MBA in the Netherlands. So why did you do that?

Peter ter Weeme: Well, I'm kind of unique in that I have a master's degree, but I don't have a bachelor's degree.

Jim Allan: Oh, did you graduate high school?

Peter ter Weeme: Yes, I did.

Jim Allan: Are we breaking news today?

Peter ter Weeme: No, no, no, I did. And I became what's called a certified advertising agency practitioner, which just gave me a designation to work in the marketing field.

Jim Allan: So like a diploma or something?

Peter ter Weeme: Yeah, it was through the Institute of Canadian Advertisers, now it's called the Institute of Canadian Agencies at the time, it was called the Institute of Canadian Advertisers, I think. And then that together with my graduate school admission and my work experience, some of which you've referenced earlier, I was given placement into the program. Yeah, I went to the Netherlands. Why did I do that? Because I wanted European exposure and experience and I wanted some kind of credentials. I had been working in other roles and I just decided it was time to get something on my resume that showed that I had some sort of credibility beyond just my work experience and that's why I did an MBA. But I did a different kind of MBA, it was an MBA that specialized in environmental management. And that was pretty rare 30 years ago.

Jim Allan: Was it worth it for you?

Peter ter Weeme: 100%.

Jim Allan: Did it change your life?

Peter ter Weeme: Absolutely, because first of all, it gave me a credential that I didn't have, it exposed me to a well-rounded business education, whether it was production management, finance, mergers and acquisition, finance, HR, whatever, it just gave me a grounding in a bunch of different dimensions. And then that environmental management piece, I felt that was not too long after the Rio conference on the environment that took place in the late 80s when the term sustainable development actually kind of entered the lexicon. And I saw that there might be an opportunity to work at that intersection of business and environmental issues and social issues. And I think it was a bit ahead of my time, to be honest, there isn't a business on the planet that can't be thinking of these things or they get canceled to a certain degree. And so, yeah, I mean, I was early and many of my business school peers, they wanted to be brand managers or work for a consulting firm or whatever, and they thought I was crazy to specialize in environmental management. I quote, that's a career limiting move. Well, guess what? Not so much.

Jim Allan: I thought you'd be a really interesting person to interview because you've done so many different things. And then at a certain point, you went to India. So why did you go to India in the first place?

Peter ter Weeme: Well, gosh, there's a long answer to that. I'll try and keep it short. But the last time I saw you, I don't even,

Jim Allan: it was several years ago, but you were just visiting, but you were living in Mumbai, India at the time for at least five years, right? Five years?

Peter ter Weeme: Yeah, from 2011 to 2016. Yep, it was a very contact sport, different reality than living in North America for sure. Why do we end up there? The shortest story I can tell you is because India in 2010 brought in a law that required companies to spend of a certain size and profitability to spend a rolling three year average of their profit, 2%, sorry, of a rolling three year average of their profits on corporate social responsibility initiatives. Now, to be honest, which sounds very progressive, part of it is because of the government's failure to meet basic human needs. So it wasn't exactly a tax. It was a very cleverly designed law and what they did was they didn't require companies to actually do the work. They required companies to report on whether or not they had done that work and whether they had made those investments. And so there was a number of different NGOs and watchdogs as it were that would do annual lists of did companies follow through or who did the best job and that sort of thing. So that's when the law came in about 12 years ago and then I have a lot of experience in that corporate social responsibility world. After I finished my MBA, I went back to my communication roots. I used to be the chief communications and marketing officer for Mountain Equipment Co-op, now Mountain Equipment Company, for example. And then I went back into consulting world and always working at that intersection of business and sustainability. And I used to be the chair of Canadian Business for Social Responsibility. So when this law came forward in India, we had an agency in Vancouver, we just thought, well, this would be kind of interesting to go in India for a while. And there is no shortage of both opportunities and issues to address around corporate social responsibility in India. So we thought it was fertile ground and conscious of not trying to be having that colonial mentality like, oh, we're the white Western guys and we know better. But it's certainly, we brought some skillsets and other relationships and things to the party as it were and ended up working with some of the largest Indian corporations on their corporate social responsibility initiatives. And then there was a number of NGOs because it was suddenly this flood of money. NGOs were also jockeying for position, like how can we be a partner with these corporations on implementing various things, whether it was hunger or health issues or environmental issues or whatever. So we worked with a lot of NGOs to kind of professionalize them and position them to be a partner with many of these corporations.

Jim Allan: And so you, I mean, that sounds like the wild wild Far East, or how would you describe it then? So it's, so presumably business has done a little differently over there.

Peter ter Weeme: Yeah, I mean, as I said earlier, life in India and many Indian people, they go, wow, man, respect that you put up with five years there or that you live five years there because it's a totally different reality. You're never alone. There's always stuff going on. It heaves, the country heaves, quite frankly, with people and it's growing and developing very, very quickly. So there's lots of opportunity there. There's also lots of issues there. There's still the caste system, which although it's theoretically outlawed according to the constitution that was created when India got its independence, it's still very much a cultural practice. And so, you know, 40% of Indian women are anemic and 40% of children have stunting and rickets and other issues because they don't have enough nutrition and there's just no end of, you know, pollution and, you know, every year around, starting around the fall, you'll read in the newspaper about the air quality in Delhi because it's winter time, there's inversions, it's hard up against the Himalayas and it's a very challenging place to live and people's lives, quite frankly, every day are, you know, compromised. And now you add to that the climate crisis and if any of your viewers, you know, are following that, you know, this year, temperatures were regularly 48, 49, 50 degrees Celsius, right, so India is really, you know, ground zero for a lot of major challenges and then, so there was no shortage of things to do. I also became very involved in the, I became the chair of the Indo-Canadian business, or Chamber of Commerce in the Delhi NCR region, NCR means National Capital Region, was very involved in the Dutch community, business community, as well as the British business community. So, you know, I had my tentacles into all kinds of things and a lot of really significant, powerful Indians also interacted with those groups, so I had an amazing experience, I have to say.

Jim Allan: So when I talked to you in person, in the middle of that, I mean, it seemed like you were there for indefinitely or the long haul, I guess the obvious question is why did you, so suddenly I noticed on LinkedIn that you'd moved back to Vancouver Island of all places, a little different.

Peter ter Weeme: Yeah, that was like a 180, no question about it.

Jim Allan: So why'd you leave?

Peter ter Weeme: We said at the beginning, we'd give it five years. It was a five-year project. I have lived a lot of my life in five-year increments. Five years is long enough that you can set some goals, it's short enough that you're not overly committing to something, so it was a five-year plan, we stayed for five years, but during that five-year timeframe, the pollution in Delhi became really untenable, like you couldn't see 100 meters down the street some days. And we have a child who at the time was, I think, ranging between nine and 14 years old, and the New York Times, there was a reporter there who wrote a very famous article because he was leaving, his child's lungs were collapsing from living in Delhi and it was like, we can't ignore anymore, although we were very committed to the work, we can't ignore the health issues. And I know it's kind of white privilege just to flee because many, many millions of people don't have that choice, but we were there voluntarily and after five years, we just said enough is enough. So part of it's five-year plan, part of it is personal decision to get out.

Jim Allan: So did you have something lined up when you just left it all again?

Peter ter Weeme: Yeah, we kind of left it and then we wanted to decompress for a while, so we actually moved to an island off of Nanaimo called Gabriel Island, it's a small artsy island and it was more, we bought an acreage and it was kind of like, well, let's decompress and do some consulting work for a while and just kind of right the ship for a little bit and then I got back onto a career trajectory which has taken me to where I am today. So yeah, so back to Vancouver Island, now Kamloops for the, I mean, you're in Kamloops, basically because that's where the water is there. Our head office is in Kamloops, there's 500 people in Kamloops and then there's a secondary office in Vancouver which has about 400 people, but my role is based in Kamloops.

Jim Allan: So I think I might've asked you this, but no questions about gambling in the job interview at all?

Peter ter Weeme: Nope, what they wanted was somebody who could help them navigate the transition of the company to a social purpose model and so when we talk about a social purpose business, we mean a company that really places a social purpose at its pinnacle for its reason for being, why it exists so it replaces the mission and generally speaking, a social purpose company is one that's trying to make the world better and its growth is a positive force in society.

Jim Allan: Okay, so I read that Forrester report that you commissioned, so here's a quote from it. The term social purpose company is defined as a company whose enduring reason is being to create a better world. These companies are an engine for good in that they create a better world. Their growth is a positive force in society. It's a lot to live up to, right? So I mean, I've seen this, what's ESG?

Peter ter Weeme: Environmental, social and governance.

Jim Allan: So I've seen that a lot. It's a hot thing and suddenly there's ESG gurus, there's courses you can take and so I did, Google's my favorite thing to do and I'm bored and I just Googled ESG and what pops up right away is in all honesty, it's ESG oil, ESG mining. So it's like, is it a marketing thing just to make people look good or?

Peter ter Weeme: Listen, there's some blowback that's happening to quite frankly. It comes down to companies, are they authentic or inauthentic? And there are companies who have bad practices who try to wrap themselves in a virtuous cloak. ESG at its core though is something that is meaningful and substantial and is an orientation that a company takes to acknowledge its impacts from an ESG perspective but ESG is not what I'm talking about. When I talk about a social, we have an ESG framework, it rolls up to our social purpose but being a social purpose company and our social purpose is to generate win-wins, there's the gambling language, win-wins for the greater good. And so what we've been doing over the last two years since we adopted the social purpose is in every part of our business looking for how can we generate win-wins for the greater good as an employer, in our products, in the way that we market, in the way that we view our role in the world, the kinds of even like our legal team, whatever, like it's a total mind shift and our employees are embracing it. They always knew that we were doing something good in the sense that we were contributing money to the province that was used for, as I said earlier, for healthcare education and so on. But now it's not just the end of pipe, it's all the decision, and the money that comes out the other end, it's all the decisions that get us there and can we make better decisions and make them more mindful.

Jim Allan: Is it like a set of standards or like best practices for organizations? To be a social purpose company?

Peter ter Weeme: Yeah. Well, there's a number of things that you would do if you wanna be a legitimate social purpose company, from how you engage with your stakeholders, how you engage with your employees, how you make decisions and so on, but there isn't necessarily a standard per se that exists presently. That's actually kind of in development and I'm involved in some of that work, but there isn't like a checklist that you say, if I do these 15 things, I'm a social purpose company.

Jim Allan: I mean, I've worked for financial institutions and I'm certainly, there's a contact or two of mine that are now talking about ESG anyway. And so I worry that this sort of thing is potentially window dressing and it says that in your report as well, right? So is a bank really trying to make the world a better place or are they trying, all these companies, the oil and mining and banking, are they trying to make a lot of money for their shareholders? Because if you're a president of a bank and if you're not making enough money for your shareholders, you get fired, right? So that must be hard for you to push that through, isn't it?

Peter ter Weeme: Yeah, it's interesting because some of our employees have said to me, well, is our shareholder, who's the province of British Columbia, is our shareholder gonna be happy that we offer them less money being a social purpose company? And I'm like, I don't know where you got this idea from. It's not a zero sum game. I think if you look at, me too, Black Lives Matter, the underbelly that was revealed in terms of inequality through the pandemic, the climate crisis, there's myriad problems in the world. If you're a company in this day and age and you don't take stock of those issues, then quite frankly, you're gonna find yourself less profitable and more and more on the margins. And so being a social purpose company gives you license to really embrace some of those challenges and figure out how you can be a part of the solution. And in so doing, we hired 20 people in our marketing team over the last six months because we had some growth and we had some turnover. And those employees came because we're a social purpose company. They are energized by what we're doing. Whether you're a millennial or a Gen Z or whatever, people want meaning in their life. Leadership skills have changed. There's an expectation that we can bring our whole selves to work, that we're gonna talk about difficult subjects. And that's part of what it means to be a company, I think a good company today. And more and more companies are being confronted with some of these other issues that I just mentioned. And if they try and explain them away or poo poo them, then quite frankly, consumers are gonna vote with their wallets in many cases.

Jim Allan: Is the trend in that direction more and more progressive or is there a pushback just politically across? I mean, you know, I- It depends on what country you're in. I watched too much politics or I did until I kind of just detox from it all. But-

Peter ter Weeme: You know, European countries tend to be more on this model. Even the UK is quite a leader in this space around social purpose and community benefit corporation. So companies that build right into their charter of incorporation, that they're gonna be responsive to the community, that their sole purpose is not the Milton Friedman School of only the shareholder is supreme. That actually the way that you generate wealth for the company is by being more mindful of who your stakeholders are. We call that stakeholder capitalism these days as opposed to shareholder capitalism. So that's a trend. In the United States, it's much more polarized. I think, you know, every aspect of life in America, it's a broken country, if you ask me, and it's at war with itself. And in the U.S., you're seeing a lot of people, you know, the governors of states who are bringing in laws that say we don't want, if you're managing our money, we don't want any of this ESG bullshit presented to us. We want you just to maximize profits, for example. So it's much more polarized south of the border in Canada. It's still-

Jim Allan: It's not sneaking in a little bit, even in the Western provinces. I mean, I'm just a-

Peter ter Weeme: It depends on what, to be honest, depends on what province you're in. I mean, I live on the left coast. We have an NDP government. You know, their priorities are things like people first, sustainable development, and so on. So we're very much aligned with the government that we currently have in power. But even in Ontario, you know, which is run by the conservative government, you're seeing a lot of companies that are much more mindful of what their impact in the community is, the social impact, the environmental impact that they're creating, and they need to wrap their mind around it. If they wanna, there's a war for talent on, and younger people in particular, they want this stuff. And they've seen their parents or sell their souls for the company men and get tossed aside when they're 55, and they're like, screw it. That's not what I'm interested in. I want a job with meaning, and that's where I think a lot of this work comes in. That's a big trend in the research, too. People want more meaning. They want more accountability, and we can talk about that a little bit.

Jim Allan: So if, that just made me think of something, but if the government changed in BC, are you relatively, is the lottery corporation relatively autonomous from whoever might be running the government?

Peter ter Weeme: Well, we get a letter every year called a mandate letter, and that tells us what the governance policies are, and they expect us to support them. If we go from a more left government to a right government, then we need to support whatever the government of the day, what it determines the priorities are going to be. But I think you can even see it, irrespective of ideology, most governments today are more focused on issues relating to environmental concerns or social concerns, housing prices, whatever the case may be. So I don't think it's gonna change materially for the way that we handle ourselves, and we, quite frankly, as I said, have replaced our mission with the social purpose, and unless the government of the day says, get rid of that, we want you to just, you know, put all that aside, well, we'll have to do that, but I don't think they will, because we're inspiring a lot of change, not only in our industry, but with other current corporations and other companies across our industry and across the country.

Jim Allan: So the money comes in, and then the money goes out, and you're maybe building capital projects, whatever it is, do you have an opinion, do you get to have an opinion on whatever the money is spent on, or?

Peter ter Weeme: No, we don't. That, now we generate about $1.5 billion every year, at least we will this year, in profits. Of that, about 140 million will, the government will give to community groups of various kinds, parent advisory communities, sports groups, community groups. Some money goes to what we call host local government, so if you have a casino in your community, you get some of that money. 7% plus of what we generate goes to indigenous communities in British Columbia and so on, so a lot of that, we don't say where that money, we don't have a say in where that money goes, but it goes to good things. And then the healthcare system and the education system is where the rest goes.

Jim Allan: So I'm gonna talk to you about gambling for a second, because it is a controversial topic, and I'm no saint or anything, but I don't gamble that much, but I'm in a couple sports pools. So from the BCLC on the website, I guess, gambling has an enduring appeal because of the suspense found in the magic moment between net and result. The bet is often lost, but an experience is always won. But for a small percentage of players, the magic moment can take a dark turn. BCLC exists to ensure gambling in British Columbia is safe, legal, and harm-free. So my observation is, with pro sports, what used to be illegal is now legal across North America certainly. Single event betting, yep. And it's kind of taking over because legal gambling companies are sponsoring everything as well. I'm talking about football and baseball, so it's everywhere. And what I worry about is that sometimes you used to just watch sports for the foot. For the joy of the athletic accomplishment, but now it's getting, I fear that now you'll only watch it because you gotta wager on it. I feel that myself, even in football pools and stuff. If I'm not somehow involved in a game, I won't watch it, where when I was a teenager, I would watch it, just see who, this exciting final match or whatever it was. I don't know, how do you sort of rationalize?

Peter ter Weeme: I'm gonna respond to that in a couple ways. One is, still the vast majority of sports fans don't bet. They don't wanna bet, or they don't feel comfortable betting. They don't understand how odds are created and so on. So there's still a huge pool of people that just watch the game because they wanna watch the game. For those who wanna make it more interesting and bet, that option exists. Now, you're also putting a frame of reference on this that is Ontario based. So Ontario has changed its rules and all the other Canadian provinces have not. So let me just quickly explain. Single event betting is legal across Canada. But in Ontario, the government has licensed up to 70 companies to offer various gambling products. And many of them are focused in the sports field. So because how many Torontoans does it take to screw in a light bulb? Just one to stand there while the world revolves around them? Sorry, Torontonians, I used to live in Toronto. But the reality is that people in Ontario, and Canada for that matter, they see what's happening in Ontario with the media is here, it spills over into other provinces.

Jim Allan: And so we think that everybody is like FanDuel and DraftKings and all these other. On the stage too, all that stuff.

Peter ter Weeme: Yeah, and all that stuff. But if you live in most provinces in Canada, you can only bet with the legal option, which is the state sanctioned one, in our case, BCLC. So we have sewn up partnerships with all of the key sports teams in British Columbia. But we do place a really strong focus on what we call player health. Some people call it responsible gambling. Our vision is to have the healthiest players in the world. We have a program that we call Game Sense and we actually license it to seven jurisdictions in Canada and many in the United States including MGM hotels and resorts because we have a world leading program and that is really designed to help ensure that people understand how the games work, that people have the right skills and knowledge to debunk certain myths. There's no such thing as, oh, this machine is hot or if I rubbed my rabbit foot that I'm gonna suddenly win this game. That's not the case. So we educate people a lot about that and we put in place different things like on our online system called Play Now. You have a dashboard when you sign in, how much money did you spend, you can set a limit, how much, you can set a time limit. So we've created a bunch of tools, AI tools and so on to help people manage and ensure that they're using gambling as a form of entertainment.

So I can spend 200 bucks on a night and I can go see Elton John in a concert or I can spend 200 bucks with my friends and go to a casino and have a night of entertainment. It's the same thing, right? And if we ban it, and that's where my Dutch pragmatism comes in, you ban alcohol and prohibition, what do you do? You push it underground. You ban abortion, what do you do? You push it underground. So gambling has existed for centuries, if not millennia actually. The Great Wall of China was in part financed by lottery and the modern day lottery goes back to Bruges, Belgium in the 1450s, that's where we get the word lottery from, it comes from the Flemish word lotinge. And that was used to raise money voluntarily for city coffers to be used on public works because they knew that people wouldn't tolerate any more taxes. So, you know, it is a form of definitely, there is a profit margin.

Jim Allan: It's a form of taxation, is it not?

Peter ter Weeme: Well, no, it's, well, if you wanna call it voluntary taxation in a sense, but it's not like anybody's holding, if you're, you know, holding a gun to your head to do it and we wanna deliver you a great entertainment experience, like you said, whether you win or not. And for a lot of people, you know, I sat in a cab not long ago in Vancouver and the guy, you know, we had a conversation and he said, oh, you work for the lottery corporation. He goes, you know what? I love to buy scratch and win lottery tickets and I, even if I don't win, I feel good knowing that the money goes to good causes in the province.

Jim Allan: Yeah, I mean, if I were to, you know, give, I've been to, I actually love Las Vegas. I've been there several times. I don't gamble there though.

Peter ter Weeme: It's a different model too in Vegas, right? It's private companies that are there.

Jim Allan: Well, I go to Las Vegas for the conventions. It's kind of the modern, I read Playboy for the articles kind of thing. I go there for, I worked on that. I worked on that, so.

Peter ter Weeme: That was a great line, okay.

Jim Allan: But I like the idea if you go to a casino or engage in gambling and all, it's like in entertainment. So give yourself a budget. So whatever it is, let's say it's a hundred bucks. I'm going to casino. When the higher bucks is gone. In my opinion, the house always wins.

Peter ter Weeme: It always wins. Or most of the time. So that hundred bucks, you know you're spending it. You could be on a show, as you say, or you're spending it and there'll be some highs and lows along the way on your way to zero, right? Because you're gonna, the longer you gamble, the more likely it is that you lose.

Jim Allan: I do, you know, I do, it is pretty interesting sometimes when you, I mean, I've gone to Vegas, but I've also worked there. And sometimes you're waking, you're getting up at seven or eight in the morning. Some people have been up all night. That said, it's an acquired taste, but actually I like Las Vegas. It's an odd thing.

Peter ter Weeme: But you know, Vegas has transformed as well over the years, right? You go there because you wanna see a Cirque du Soleil show or the Celine show or Adele or whoever is performing. And then there's great other attractions and amusement parks and so on. So Vegas did go through a period of, you know, where it needed to reinvent itself, which it has done. But it's a very different model. It's a destination place, right? In British Columbia, we distribute the casinos in communities across the province. It's not that sort of come one, come all to one part of the province to gamble. And we are not motivated to generate profits just for the sake of our shareholders. We are totally, you know, the government has written into our mandate that we have to take a very careful approach to player health and anti-money laundering and a range of things, which we do, in order to ensure that it is a form of entertainment and not something that is negative.

Now, are there people who struggle with addiction around gambling? 100%.

Jim Allan: Right.

Peter ter Weeme: They would anyway, you know, they would probably go underground. They wouldn't have the supports we have in every casino, what's called a Game Sense Advisor. We have them online as well. We're the first, one of the first jurisdictions globally to ever do that. So we offer supports, we use non-stigmatizing language, right? We try and support people if they feel that, you know, they can also voluntarily self-exclude and say, please don't let me into your property anymore. And we honor that. And if they decide at a point in time, they want to come back, we have a program that they have to follow in order to come back and demonstrate really that they're ready. But there's also that need to find a balance between free will and a nanny state, right? Like if somebody says, I want to gamble and I'm ready to gamble, well, you know, we can't stop people from doing that. It's their choice. And it is a form of entertainment. So there's absolutely a razor's edge. And that's one of the things that's most appealing to me and most interesting to the work is that there is that tension constantly between the form of entertainment and that side where it can tip the dark side. Yeah, the side that can tip some people in to a place that's not in their interest or the interests of their family.

Jim Allan: Do you like the job?

Peter ter Weeme: Absolutely. Yeah, well, it's self explanatory, I suppose. Well, no, I mean, because the work that we were doing as a social purpose company is being infused in every part of the business, right? So first of all, I'm getting to know every aspect of the company and we're a $3 billion company, but I'm also, you know, we're incorporating the social purpose into the employee experience, we're incorporating into our brand, we're incorporating, we're filtering our products through it. We are meaningfully engaging in indigenous reconciliation as a result of being a social purpose company is giving us more license to do a better job and think differently as a company. So for me, it's really exciting and part of my role is also to inspire other businesses.

So I'm working with our media buyers to media buying service. They buy a billion dollars every year in Canada and I'm giving them advice. I'm advising our advertising agencies and I'm trying to help create change in the industry that goes far beyond just ourselves and from that perspective, it's really satisfying. It's also important, I think, that people also are aware of their own impact and not just point a finger at one or two industries and blame them for everything. We all are part of this journey and all part of the impacts and the challenges that the globe is facing and we're trying to be more conscious as a company and I think more companies should be doing what we're doing and we're open to the input and the feedback both from our employees as well as our stakeholders and I think something that's really critical to us as a company is that stakeholder engagement.

So we're in the midst of totally refreshing and updating our stakeholder engagement framework, setting goals with each stakeholder group, making sure that we listen to them, that we take on board their worldview and try and find the sweet spot between all those different opinions and I think we emerge as a better company. I think society is better for it and I think we can inspire other businesses as well in the act of doing that work but I don't think anybody has perfection and if perfection is your goal, you're always gonna be disappointed, right? But you have to be clear about what your goals are and it reminds me of a statement that was made of a VIA rail conductor and somebody said, well, why do you bother to publish a timetable since your trains are always late and he said, well, how else would we know how far behind schedule we are, right? And so it's that kind of thing, like it's important to have goals and to know where you wanna go and sure we're not gonna be perfect and we're gonna learn from it but the one thing that we're doing and that I've sort of inculcated with all of our team is we have to talk about what we're learning, what we did right and what we did wrong and it's all open source so you reference this paper that we commissioned and that's how does marketing look different in a social purpose company and we wanna give all of this away. We did a climate risk assessment. We're working with what we call service providers.

They operate the casinos with us in a joint venture. We're sharing that information with them. We're sharing it with our colleagues in other crown corporations. We've brought 30 something crown corporations in British Columbia together in the month of November around diversity and inclusion and what does that mean and how can crown corporations do better and so on and so we are giving all of this away. We're not husbanding it. We wanna inspire other organizations to do better too and will we make missteps along the way? 100% but so will you in your personal life and so will other people in their personal life or their business life and if all we do is call each other out for our failures, we're never gonna make progress.

Jim Allan: No, you're doing good work. No, I wanna thank you for coming. You have a five-year plan. I have a five-week plan so you got me beat. There, so thanks for coming by, Peter.

Peter ter Weeme: Thanks for asking some tough questions.

Jim Allan: Yeah, I skipped a few so I'll mail the rest to you. But thanks for coming. I do appreciate the long voyage out here.

Peter ter Weeme: It was my pleasure, Jim, and hopefully your viewers will take something away from today's conversation.