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Editorial: Entice workers with real jobs

The low oil prices that are bad news for Alberta could be good news for B.C., if Premier Christy Clark succeeds in luring British Columbians back home to fill jobs in this province’s resource industries.

The low oil prices that are bad news for Alberta could be good news for B.C., if Premier Christy Clark succeeds in luring British Columbians back home to fill jobs in this province’s resource industries.

It won’t be advertising that brings people back, though, but solid jobs, and Clark should be careful not to advertise employment that doesn’t yet exist.

The drastic decline in the price of oil — a 50 per cent drop since last summer — has already caused layoffs in Alberta’s oil industry, which employs thousands of British Columbians who have moved to Alberta or commute there. While conceding that low oil prices are bad for the Canadian economy, the premier sees an opportunity for B.C.

Speaking in Victoria to the Truck Loggers’ Association last week, Clark said the government is considering buying advertising space at the Fort McMurray, Alta., airport, “where we can invite British Columbians to come home. And we are prepared to present them with a ‘welcome home’ basket to help . … We will connect them with the information and support they are going to need when they get home to gain the skills to work in forestry or truck logging, or to go work in the natural-gas sector.”

There’s merit to efforts aimed at attracting workers to B.C.’s forest industry. The industry began one of the most severe downturns in its history in 2007 as the U.S. housing market declined, lumber prices fell and the Canadian dollar rose. That caused a large exodus of B.C. workers, particularly to Alberta and its labour-hungry oilpatch.

It was devastating to many of B.C.’s lumber-dependent communities, and they would welcome the return of jobs and families. The U.S. economy is strengthening, and that means more construction south of the border that uses Canadian lumber, which is made more attractive by the low Canadian dollar.

While prospects are improving for B.C.’s forestry industries, challenges remain, and one of those is finding enough qualified workers. Even without a substantial increase in markets, the industry faces a wide gap between labour supply and demand.

“Industry demand in priority occupations is expected to grow by 26 per cent over the next 10 years, compared to eight per cent growth in occupational supply,” says an October 2013 report prepared for B.C.’s coastal forest industry. “Six of the seven occupations projected to experience the most severe skills gaps over the next 10 years are forestry-specific occupations.”

The main reason for the gap is that the forestry workforce is growing older, and retirements and other attrition will create more than 80 per cent of the job openings. The report projects about 16,000 job openings in the forestry industry through 2022.

The supply of skilled forestry workers is “inadequate,” says the report, adding that B.C.’s industry training and apprenticeship system does not meet workers’ needs.

In addition to training, the government should focus on preparing a realistic inventory of B.C.’s timber supply to ensure the industry can be sustainable. Otherwise, those jobs will eventually disappear, along with our forests.

While unemployed oil workers might be attracted home for forestry jobs, with help from Clark’s “welcome basket” of retraining, it’s hard to see them coming back to prepare for liquefied natural gas jobs, when those jobs don’t exist.

The same low oil prices that are causing gloom in Alberta have also depressed the LNG market, lowering B.C.’s prospects in the process. Workers might not be easily lured home to B.C. for the pot of gold at the end of the LNG rainbow without solid assurances that it is something more than wishful thinking.