Northeast News

 By Kyla Corpuz

 FORT ST. JOHN – The Immigration Task Force met with stakeholders and local businesses who dished out their experiences with hiring abroad on Jan. 18.

“We met with a group of about 30 who have a great interest and are very concerned about the labour shortage here in Fort St. John,” said John Yap Richmond-Steveston MLA, who is heading the task force.

The unemployment rate in the northeast is the lowest among the province sitting at four per cent. 

“We have a huge need for employees,” said Peace River North MLA Pat Pimm. “We have the work but we need the employees, and that’s a little bit of a different story than what you would hear in other parts of the province.”

With the unique case of worker shortages that the north is experiencing, Fort St. John’s Chamber of Commerce president Brent Hodson said it would be vital to have a delegate further north of Prince George to sit on the task force.

 “Prince George has very different issues than we do in the Northeast, so in our opinion, they cannot speak or represent the Northeast region,” Hodson wrote in a letter to Premier Christy Clark.

The Chamber of Commerce asked the province to include a northeastern representative to “articulate the issues unique to only this area.”

“They [the rest of the province] are not facing the unemployment issues that we’re facing up here,” said Hodson.

Yap said Fort St. John is not the only community that was vying for a spot on the task force.

“We heard from other communities: ‘Why didn’t we have people on this task force?’ And I appreciate that. We would all like to have all representation from all communities.”

However, he assured that the concerns brought to light at the meeting would be reflected in the report. “While he’s [Pimm] not sitting on the task force with me, I can assure he will have active interest in these issues … that between himself and myself we will … advocate in the Peace River North region, Fort St. John and Fort Nelson.”

There are a number of sectors experiencing the shortage of skilled and non-skilled workers, from oil and gas conglomerates to Tim Hortons, Wal Mart and Canadian Tire. 

Ross Bannerman, owner of Fort St. John’s Canadian Tire is far too familiar with it all. He attended the meeting with the Immigration Task Force and, like Hodson and Pimm, feels the north needs to be treated a bit differently.

“Our biggest hope is that they will establish a process in B.C. where our region is … given a much higher priority for the approval of foreign workers and the expediting of applications to get foreign workers.”

Bannerman is still in the process to hear from Customs and Immigrations on the status of an application he’s been working on since January 2011.

“The process is very cumbersome,” he said. “It is twice as  huge of an administration burden on businesses to adhere to all of the requirements very stringently in the application.”

So, if foreign workers are so hard to obtain, why not hire locally?

“We’re hiring locals everyday, we advertise every day for local workers so it is a constant need, but it’s very difficult in retail when there are much higher wage jobs readily available in the community.”

Which is why Bannerman said even though it’s costly and time consuming to obtain immigrant workers, once they arrive, it pays off.

“I couldn’t begin to describe how big a contribution they have made to improve the operation of our business,” he said.

He currently has a dozen foreign workers, mostly from the Philippines. 

Currently, businesses have to go through a Labour Market Opinion process followed by obtaining Visa status for future employees from Customs and Immigration, which Bannerman said is the most “frustrating” step.

“The other problem particularly that we face is that after waiting for months for our application their rejection rate is very high which makes our efforts futile.”

Hodson said there needs to be a program that applies specifically to the needs of the northeast. “These programs have been a God-send to a lot of communities and they want to continue using them, but they want the process to be easier and change the programs to fit our needs.”

Pimm is optimistic that the Immigration Task Force will address those needs by starting a pilot project that gives better and faster access to foreign worker programs. 

Clark announced the Immigration Task Force on Dec. 8 as part of the B.C. Job’s Plan. 

The nine-member committee is heading to various communities in B.C. to gain feedback on the current immigration processes and come up with ways to improve it so more skilled workers can swiftly integrate to B.C.