The BC Liberals made a campaign promise today, vowing to add 95 Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) seats in Prince George post-secondaries by 2022.
The announcement was made at local construction firm IDL Projects. IDL President Todd Patterson, has had many jobs delayed because of low personnel, and these added seats will help tackle the issue.
“A lot of the engineers that we hire, and civil techs, are coming out of Alberta, BC, and it’s difficult to get them to come up to the north so this is going to help fill a lot of gaps and help us be a lot more competitive in all of the projects that we complete the North,” he says, “it’s going to mean that we’re going to be able to train people in Prince George that we can put to work on all the projects that are happening in the north, and there’s there’s lots happening.”
These seats will mean 70 UNBC and 25 CNC engineering graduates in five years time. UNBC VP Academic and Provost Dan Ryan says this announcement will help the school roll out new courses.
“We’re ready to go. We’ve got the plans in place, we’ve got the idea of the courses that we can put on and how that would all fit together. We just need to work out the final plans. There’s not a lot of final details, obviously, in the announcement but we’re going to work with the government to get that all in play so we can move it all forward.”
BC Liberals adding 95 science, technology, engineering and math seats in PG, help with future engineering / tech grads @UNBC and @cnc_bc_ca pic.twitter.com/0jzJxjEfkI
— My Prince George Now (@mypgnow) May 1, 2017
Both Prince George BC Liberal candidates were at today’s announcement. Prince George-Mackenzie candidate Mike Morris also knows it’s hard attracting engineers to rural and northern BC, which is why he says both incumbent Liberal MLAs have been fighting for this.
“A lot of these projects get held up or stalled or delayed because we can’t find the engineers and technicians to work on them so this is going to speed up the post has quite a bit.”
Prince George-Valemount Liberal candidate Shirley Bond has been anticipating this skills gap, and also believes this helps address it.
“We were well aware, and certainly there’s been a lot of discussion with the university, with the college here, and with industry about the importance of closing that skills gap. One of the things that people have to recognize is it’s much harder to grow an economy, and, in fact, you can lose investment and growth if you don’t have the skilled workforce you require, so this is been a very long discussion.”
Elsewhere in BC, the provincial Liberals promise 1000 seats across many post-secondaries. Once those classes graduates, the BC Liberals are promising another 1000.
No details about funding or a concrete plan were released today.
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