Workplace Issues
Saskatchewan is boomingHere's something to note if you're currently out of work or think you soon will be as Southwestern Ontario's economy continues to tank. |
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Saskatchewan is booming. Yes, booming. And it wants workers of all stripes to bolster its burgeoning manufacturing sector -- almost irony for Ontarians.
I sat down with Saskatchewan's Labour Minister, Rob Norris, when he was in London, Ont., where his ministry was putting on a job fair and looking for transportation technology partnerships.
Commenting on just how many jobs there are in his province right now, Norris said a job board run by the government has 9,000 help wanted listings.
"We expect over the next few years to have an employment gap of between 9,000 and 13,000," he said.
Part of Saska-tchewan's problem, he said, is that there's also a demographics gap -- the young and the old are still in the province, but the middle group, the bulk of any provinces workforce, has left to find work either in the Alberta oilfields or even further west.
Another part of Saskat-chewan's problem is its red-hot, four-barrelled economy that's fuelled by uranium, potash, oil and grain -- commodities that are all in extremely high demand globally.
And while mining these commodities and selling them worldwide is an ongoing process, so is trying to add value to them -- taking the lead in research and development, refinement and enrichment processes.
WORLDWIDE SEARCH
Norris explained that Saskatchewan isn't just looking to Ontario for talent, it's also looking around the world. In fact, he just returned to Canada from a whirlwind trip to the Philippines and Hong Kong where his ministry was preaching the positives of moving to the prairies.
However, it's difficult to entice people and form partnerships -- both here and abroad -- when Saskatchew- an's success story is largely ignored or overshadowed by the successes of British Columbia and Alberta.
"We have to stop being insular if we want to grow this country," Norris said.
He's got the jobs, he's got a great cost of living story to tell and he's got property for sale that won't cost an arm and a leg.
Still worried about the sodbusting and stubble-jumping reputation of one of Canada's beautiful provinces?
Norris said the province is becoming much more cosmopolitan, but has a social culture that would be comfortable for anyone moving from Ontario.
"Peter Gzowski called us the most Canadian of all the provinces," Norris said.
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