A small collection of local business owners gathered at the Shaw House last week to discuss potential ideas on how best to combat the chronic labour shortage many are dealing with in the Lakeland.
For years, businesses in Bonnyville and Cold Lake have struggled to supplement and even retain its workforce due to a lack of employable people in the region and ever since the federal government announced wholesale changes to its Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) earlier this summer, effectively killing off the program, things have gone from bad to worse.
“Tomorrow is worse than today, and today is worse than yesterday,” were the words of local businessman Sal Naim, who runs three businesses in Bonnyville, when he spoke at the meeting last Thursday.
Naim, backed by a core group of fellow entrepreneurs and both the Bonnyville and District and Cold Lake Regional Chambers of Commerce, has long been the spokesman for solutions to the labour shortage currently being seen in the Lakeland. In recent years, local organizations have been able to find a way around that shortage by making use of the TFWP – a method of employment that allowed businesses to bring in workers from overseas to supplement their workforce.
With federal employment minister Jason Kenney taking steps back in June to reduce the usage of the program that will likely lead to its termination, local employers have been scrambling to find a way to convince the feds that something needs to be done to address a worker shortage in northern Alberta.
Last week Naim, along with Cold Lake businessman and city councillor Bob Buckle, announced that the region had reached out to a renowned Canadian lobbyist group to assist with lobbying the federal government to come up with a solution to what has long been a “serious issue” in the Lakeland.
“We're going to be bringing in Hal (Danchilla) from the Canadian Strategy Group to help us along with this thing,” Naim said. “Hal is very well connected at both a provincial and federal level and our hope is, through the media and public awareness, we're able to convey to the necessary decision makers and policy makers the issues that we're facing out here.”
Following tentative discussions, the organization provided local business owners with a draft highlighting objectives and potential solutions for the issue. According to Naim, the group stated a definite need for the provincial government to be on board and lobby the federal government for changes to help alleviate the labour shortage, something new Premier Jim Prentice indicated he would be doing last week, while also placing an importance on educating the public on the seriousness of the issue.
With local restaurant Green Oasis having drastically reduced its hours and several other businesses in the area facing the very real possibility of having to do the same, Buckle said something had to be done sooner rather than later.
“The issue here is only going to intensify the longer the federal government waits to do something,” Buckle said. “Six months from now, when we lose a portion of our labour force (due to TFW permits expiring), we're going to be in trouble. Things are only going to get worse, but we're not going away.”
He added, “We've got to do whatever we can to find a reasonable solution.”