A jobs plan should be about people
Touring rural parts of the province with the finance committee last week, a few themes emerged. One of them, on the topic of employment, reminded me of a saying I’ve heard lately: Jobs without people, people without jobs.
Many areas of the province are experiencing booms in the resource sector without the local or even regional labour force to fill them. That is the ‘jobs without people’ part that creates the fly in, fly out phenomena, importing workers from Alberta, Newfoundland and other out-of-province jurisdictions. Then there are places where the local unemployment rate is far higher than the provincial average of 7.3 %, which happens to be the worst in Western Canada. That is the ‘people without jobs’ part.
In our riding, as in many other parts of the province, we are seeing both sides of the jobs conundrum. Unfortunately, Premier Clark’s latest jobs plan does nothing to address the fundamental issue that would alleviate the situation – properly resourced apprenticeship and vocational training.
Without access to such training, the goal of local people for local jobs that we need to pursue in our region will remain a dream rather than reality. Instead of focusing on people, the Premier is doing exactly the opposite by taking away opportunities for people.
The finance committee heard from Northwest Community College vice president Dave O’Leary that its apprenticeship training program budget has been slashed by 74%. That is part of a $10 million cut by the province this year. As well, the college has not been able to secure core funding from the Ministry of Advanced Education for their award winning, highly successful, School of Exploration and Mining programs. This creates an instability that is disruptive to staff and students and gives the wrong message to industry about the importance B.C. places on training local people for job opportunities in our communities.
A jobs plan needs to be about people. Otherwise residents in Smithers, Telkwa, the Hazeltons and the rest of Stikine will not be able to take full advantage of opportunities in the resource sector. We will be bystanders while provincial policies facilitate others to come to work in our own backyard.