The provincial NDPs labour critic was in town this past week and weekend meeting with community stakeholders about the impact of northern BCs resource projects on Prince George. He met with the Chamber of Commerce, Initiatives PG, UNBC and First Nations business leaders.
Shane Simpson is also the MLA for Vancouver-Hastings. He says the biggest challenge facing Prince George and the government is making sure we have enough skilled workers;
“I do think the challenges are here, particularly around skilled trades. We know that seems to be the biggest question in the minds here is being able to have the skilled workers to meet the jobs moving forward. That still continues to be a question on whether the government will get that done.”
Although he maintains we need to focus on training Canadians for these jobs, he says that BC and Ottawa need to start a dialogue about the overhauls to the temporary foreign worker program;
“There is a lot of innovation here (in Prince George), I haven’t heard much of it from the government at this point; provincially or federally. Let’s have that conversation, so far it’s been a bit of a knee jerk reaction”
He went on to say that if we end up importing people for these roles under the temporary foreign worker program, we should be making it easy for them to become Canadians and encourage full immigration.
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