Construction boom, labour crunch
Sault Star (ON)
Tue 25 Jul 2006
Page: A8
Section:
Editorial & Opinion
Byline:
Source:

The front page of yesterday's Sault Star presented
readers with an appropriate - albeit unintentional - juxtaposition.

The main photo was of a bee on a flower, the lead story was about the local
construction industry with a photo of Rick Thomas, manager of the Sault Ste.
Marie Construction Association.

Thomas and his fellow construction workers are indeed busy as bees these
days.

"These might be the busiest times for the local industry since the late 1980s
. . . it should be the same for the next few years," said Thomas.

The association, which represents nearly 120 area construction businesses,
including contractors, suppliers and sub-contractors, has the comfort of two
mega developments - the new hospital and the Borealis-Gateway tourism
development - for which shovels have yet to get into the ground. Construction of
the new hospital, valued at a minimum $180 million, will begin next spring with
occupancy by 2009, while Borealis-Gateway, a $54-million project, including a
$15-million tourist attraction, is to start soon.

"With a stable market we can keep the guys wanting to stay; for the first
time in a long time they are not being forced to travel to find work," he said.

Today, those with the right skills don't have to travel, but some will go
because they will get lucrative offers which will be hard to refuse. Oil-rich
Alberta has employers scouring Northeastern Ontario in particular to fill jobs.

They are using the promise of secure employment, high wages, and assorted
big-dollar incentives to entice Ontario workers westward.

"I am hearing they are short about 40,000 tradespeople and have $100 billion
worth of work scheduled for the tar sands," said Thomas. "It (the tar sands) is
the biggest drain on manpower in the history of the industry and they are
recruiting far and wide to meet their needs."

For now, we're able to keep our workers here. But it may become more of a
challenge in the future.

The key of course is maintaining a strong local economy, but we must also
find ways to replenish the tradespeople ranks in Ontario.

Thomas hopes our current local boom could trigger additional interest in the
skilled trades.

"The biggest roadblock to training apprentices is keeping them employed. . .
. There is no shortage of interest but they tend to bail if it's going to take
four, five, even six years to complete their apprenticeship," he said.

The federal government should act on the Canadian Construction Association's
call to allow the entry of immigrant construction workers on a permanent,
temporary or seasonal basis. Similar concessions are granted to the agricultural
sector for immigrant workers.

At the same time, let's promote the construction trades in our high school
system and let young women know that construction provides a viable career
opportunity for them.

Canada must also encourage labour movement within its own borders through
incentives to relocate if necessary or to change careers. The regional
disparities are sometimes hard to justify.

In a recent Globe and Mail article, C.D. Howe economist
Yvan Guillemette
says there are significant costs to that reluctance to move. There are permanent
gaps between the national unemployment rate and many regional rates, he says,
and those gaps have been growing during the recent jobs boom.

In south-central Manitoba, for example, the unemployment rate fell to 2.2 per
cent in March of this year, while it was 8.3 per cent in nearby northwestern
Ontario. We don't want to see people leave Northern Ontario, but in some cases
there's no choice. Sault Ste. Marie was built by people who travelled across the
ocean looking for a better life.

If we don't address these issues now our economy will not reach its potential
out west in Alberta, in cities such as Toronto and right here at home in Sault
Ste. Marie.

© 2006 Osprey Media Group Inc. All rights
reserved.

Edition:
Length: 636 words