By Andrew de Souza

Prince Albert Region needs to work together or miss opportunities

Dec 1, 2010 | 5:08 AM

The North Central economic zone, which includes Prince Albert and surrounding Rural Municipalities, cities and villages, needs to work together to attract and train workers or risk falling behind the rest of the province, says the North Centre Enterprise Region.

In a labour market bench mark study released in November, NCER warned the demand for workers was set to greatly outpace the supply in the region if no action was taken.

The report said that in order to fill new jobs from growing industry, emigration and retirement, more than 1,000 workers would have to be brought in each year just to keep up with expected growth, especially from the mining sector—double the number of new workers the region already experiences.

“We have to replace those workers that are retiring plus the pressures of new demand,” said NCR economic development officer, Jonathon Theaker.

“For instance, if the Shore Gold site goes ahead, if the mill reopens, or there’s talk of 5,000 jobs if the potash mine is open with BHP Billiton.

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“We think we’re both going to have to attract immigrants, as well as look at inter-provincial migration and also work to increase the under-represented groups like First Nations in our workforce here.”

If not, the report said the result would be an almost 10,000 worker shortfall by 2021, assuming businesses even continued operating in the area with such so few workers.

The report said the biggest competition for workers would come from the rest of the province. That’s because the region needs workers in the same industries as the rest of the province and has no particular specialization compared to the rest of the country.

The region does have two strong hands to play. The first is a large, young aboriginal population.

“That’s something in our region that other parts of Saskatchewan don’t have,” said Theaker. “We have a good group of young First Nations people that could meet these positions and just need the training.”

The second, perhaps counter-intuitive strength is the region’s high unemployment rate and large aboriginal population. Theaker said these people could be integrated into the workforce more easily than immigrants.

According to the report, an important way to tackle the problem was to come up with a comprehensive marketing strategy that all stakeholders in the region could work together on.

That was the intent of the NCER’s labour market committee meeting on Tuesday. About 40 members from various companies and organizations met to hear the newest report and talk about strategies.

Theaker said the conversations will be used to put together a plan for marketing the region as a whole.

“We need everyone on board,” said Theaker. “We’re looking at some huge challenges.”

“We as an organization recognize that’s it’s already a huge problem. We need to jump up, increase that, to be able to meet that expected demand.”

Theaker said NCER would publish their findings from the meetings in the coming weeks.

A copy of the updated Labour Force Benchmark study is available here.

adesouza@panow.com