By William Stodalka, Times Colonist | Link to Article
The provincial government is looking at putting temporary foreign workers into the natural gas industry to fulfil immediate labour needs.
By William Stodalka, Times Colonist | Link to Article
The provincial government is looking at putting temporary foreign workers into the natural gas industry to fulfil immediate labour needs.
“We are in ongoing discussions with the federal government to make sure we have an immigration system that matches labour market needs,” said Shirley Bond, Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training.
Her ministry later confirmed that these discussions would include the idea of temporary foreign workers to fill immediate LNG labour needs.
This idea was also supported by Prince George-Peace River MP Bob Zimmer.
“We actually have some legislation to present to the immigration ministry about this very thing for high needs areas in Canada,” he said. “There’s a need for workers in the north and resource rich areas.”
“What I see it as, is regionally based system for tiers based on unemployment rate in that particular region,” Zimmer added. “If it’s high employment in our area, where (the unemployment rate) is four per cent or less, they would qualify as region A.”
These jobs would be “everything that is in demand” whether it would be in the restaurant industry, oil and gas industry, or anywhere else there would be a need.
Zimmer said that proposal is waiting to hear back from the Citizenship and Immigration Ministry, but that its minister, Chris Alexander, was “very receptive” to the idea.
Questions sent to Alexander about this were not returned as of press time.
For the provincial government, building a skilled workforce for the LNG sector is a very serious issue, according to Bond.
“LNG means up to 60,000 jobs at peak construction and more than 75,000 permanent jobs across our province once the five proposed plants are fully operational and nowhere is the need to align training with the jobs of tomorrow more critical than in the LNG sector,” she wrote. “We are developing a comprehensive workforce projection for the LNG sector, and will continue to invest in skills and trades training to ensure British Columbians are trained to fill these jobs. However, we also know that despite our many efforts to train workers locally, we’ll still have to fill some jobs through immigration.”
The move to fill some of these jobs with temporary foreign workers was also supported by Peace River South MLA Mike Bernier.
He said that temporary foreign workers have assisted a lot of businesses in Dawson Creek stay afloat.
“You look at the Filipino community, there are some amazing people who are really interested in becoming part of the community,” he added.
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