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“I don’t know, maybe I sound too depressed,” sighs Jon Osmann, director of operations for the Ocean Choice lobster processing plant in Souris, on the eastern tip of Prince Edward Island, as he slumps back in his chair. “I’m just a fish packer trying to get the tools and the people I need to do the job, but I can’t get the workers. We look everywhere, but it’s just so frustrating.”
For Osmann — an Icelander who in 2005 moved to Souris, about an hour’s drive east of Charlottetown, after working as a consultant for fish-processing plants in several countries — recruiting in other provinces hasn’t worked, either. Ethel Macdonald, his head of human resources, shakes her head in agreement, pointing out she has gone to job fairs and posted ads in newspapers and on websites — “you name it, we’ve done it” — trying to get the word out. But the jobs, which pay $9 to $11 an hour, go begging, and Macdonald says the plant has only 480 employees, when it needs 600 to run at optimum capacity. Meanwhile, the lobsters, valuable but highly perishable, keep coming in.
Ocean Choice isn’t alone. Across Canada — from booming Alberta and British Columbia to the more humble economies of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island — businesses are facing severe shortages in both skilled and unskilled labour. A survey by Alberta Human Resources and Employment indicates demand for workers there will likely outstrip supply by more than 100,000 by 2016. Meanwhile, an aging national labour force and a fertility rate far below replacement level (Statistics Canada says it stands at 1.54, compared with the replacement rate of 2.1) mean it’s getting tougher to find everything from certified plumbers and pipefitters to those willing to work at more menial, lower-paying jobs, like hotel maids, construction workers, Tim Hortons clerks, and general laborers, like the ones Ocean Choice needs.
Terence Yuen, a research economist at human resources firm Watson Wyatt in Toronto, says “the Canadian population is definitely aging” and that the fastest-growing group between the 2001 and 2006 census was the 55- to 64-year-old demographic. “What we have seen is just the tip of the iceberg,” Yuen adds, predicting a strong impact on the number of available workers in coming years. He estimates that Canada’s annual labour-force growth rate of 1.4% will likely drop to about 0.3% over the next 20 years.
It’s figures like these that make it clear to many business leaders that immigration, while not a total solution, will play an increasingly vital role in maintaining Canada’s prosperity. Many, however, say our policies for admitting foreigners on either a permanent or temporary basis haven’t adapted to get the people we need here when we need them. They point to long delays in processing permanent immigrants (there’s a backlog of more than 800,000 applications and up to a five-year wait) and a temporary foreign-worker program that isn’t nimble enough to deal with specific shortages.
Canada is “squandering an incredible opportunity to take advantage of our attractiveness as a destination,” says Peter Veress, founder and president of Vermax Group, a foreign-worker recruitment agency based in Calgary. “We’re one of the top destinations for immigration around the world, but the federal government has yet to bring its immigration policies in line with that reality.” Instead of promoting Canada as a “land of opportunity, a nation that welcomes immigrants,” Veress adds, the country is now “bogged down” in archaic policies that leave it at a competitive disadvantage to countries that snatch up skilled workers first, through streamlined processes.
Business owners are crying out for solutions, especially when high-flying economies like Alberta’s are sucking up workers from other provinces. Take the hospitality and tourism industry, where businesses, especially out West, are having difficulty finding enough staffers, a troubling prospect given that the 2010 Vancouver Olympics aren’t all that far away.
Bill Stewart, a vice-president at Merit Contractors Association, an Alberta-based non-profit association of firms that employ nearly 40,000 in the construction business, has seen the work-shortage crisis from both sides. “I was in Hinton earlier this summer, and when we went into a restaurant, the first thing the waitress said was that it was going to take a while to bring our order, because they were so short staffed,” he recalls. “There was also a sign on the door saying that the restaurant would close at 4 p.m. that day because there was no cook available for the night shift.” Stewart says he is being told by Merit’s member contractors that “they are having to turn down or reschedule good-paying jobs because they can’t find the workers.” There’s even been talk in the oilpatch that some big projects might have to be delayed. And that’s bad for economic growth.
Temporary workers, brought into Canada under a tightly administered program that works efficiently, would help alleviate some pressure. Osmann, for one, says there are many countries, his native Iceland included, that know how to quickly bring in temps — and there are often as many Poles in an Icelandic fish plant as locals. The situation at Ocean Choice during the past two seasons, meanwhile, highlights just one of the many problems with Canada’s immigration policy.
The company thought it had found a solution in a federal government pilot project for temporary foreign unskilled workers. Sure, it would take time and money to prove that every effort had been made to hire Canadians first — but if it meant getting the necessary help, it would be worth the thousands it would cost to recruit foreigners, including paying their return airfare and finding them suitable accommodation. In May 2006, 30 Russians and Ukrainians started working at the Souris plant on temporary foreign worker permits. They stayed on until the end of December before returning home, pockets filled with Canadian cash. Osmann says the recruits were “diligent, hard workers,” and he was happy to apply for even more temporary foreigners for the 2007 lobster season. The company requested permits on behalf of 80, including 15 from northern India.
There was a glitch, however. The temporary work program that had gone relatively smoothly in 2006 turned into a disaster, thanks to what appeared to be tighter regulations on the part of federal authorities — restrictions Osmann can’t quite get a fix on. “Every time we tried to find out more details, we couldn’t really get a straight answer,” he says. The end result was that by springtime only 14 of the 80 foreigners who were approved for work permits were actually given visas. (The number has since risen to just over 20.) The approvals also came too late — the workers didn’t arrive until almost a month into the spring lobster season. Among the rejected were all the applicants from northern India, who had applied on the recommendation of a local, who is married to a woman from the same region.
Despite rejections like these, Canada is still seen as a world leader when it comes to welcoming foreigners. The question is whether the numbers we’re accepting are enough — and whether we’re doing the right things to attract the best, brightest and most skilled as quickly as we need them. In late 2005, Joe Volpe, then federal Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, suggested that Canada increase its immigration targets to 1% of the population, which would mean bringing in 320,000 annually, or roughly a 45% increase over the average level in the previous decade. The current Conservative government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper has also said the country needs more immigrants, but has stopped short of setting specific targets. Meanwhile, the backlog of applicants appears to have only grown — an estimated 500,000 of those waiting are much-needed skilled workers.
As it stands, says Diana MacKay, assistant director of education and learning for the Conference Board of Canada, immigration is now responsible for about half of Canada’s population growth, and 70% of our labour-market growth. (Compare that with the middle decades of the past century, when the baby boom was in full swing and immigration accounted for only one-fifth of the country’s population increases.) However, despite the key role immigration could play in keeping our economy vital, the Conference Board argues we are not using it to full advantage. “Our immigrant selection processes are not ensuring that the best qualified or most needy applicants are selected with all possible speed,” it noted in a 2004–05 report.
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