Alberta Boom = Immigration
Alberta boom a labour-intensive process
Alberta’s low jobless rates, affordable housing and high average wages — about $4 an hour above those in Ontario and B.C. — are the key drivers behind the surge, which shows no signs of slowing.
Photograph by: Colleen De Neve , Postmedia News, file
EDMONTON – If history proves anything, it’s that people will go where there is more opportunity to better their lives. In fact, that’s how Canada was built — through successive waves of new immigrants.
My father’s ancestors moved to this country from Ireland in the 1830s. In the early 20th century, my mother’s mother, then just 18, arrived from England. A few years after the Second World War ended, my wife’s parents moved to Ontario from Italy. As their families grew and prospered, they spread out across the continent and beyond, wherever job opportunities took them.
Today, Alberta is experiencing the latest in a long series of in-migration waves, as hungry jobseekers hoping to build a better life move here from other parts of Canada and abroad.
The province’s population recently topped four million — double the 1980 total — with an army of newcomers arriving from Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes and British Columbia.
The sluggish pace of economic growth in many other parts of Canada has unleashed a human stampede to Wild Rose Country.
“Interprovincial migration is on the rise, with the absolute number of migrants over the past year hitting the highest level in almost a quarter century,” Robert Kavcic, senior economist with BMO Capital Markets, reported this week.
“Most of them are headed to Alberta, where net inward migration has surged to more than 50,000 people over the past year, the highest on record.”
Alberta’s low jobless rates, affordable housing and high average wages — about $4 an hour above those in Ontario and B.C. — are the key drivers behind the surge, which shows no signs of slowing.
Since thousands of fly-in, fly-out oilsands workers take their fat paycheques home with them to places like Abbotsford, B.C., Sydney, N.S., or Wallaceburg, Ont., you might think these places would be grateful for the injection of wealth.
But that’s generally not the case. Too often, Alberta’s wealth breeds only envy and contempt elsewhere. Indeed, in typically Canadian fashion, some eastern politicians insist the playing field must be levelled.
Instead of supporting Alberta’s booming economy — which generates taxes and wealth for the entire country — they want more public money poured into skills development in their home provinces, as if that will somehow spur equivalent levels of job creation there.
At the same time, they oppose tougher employment insurance eligibility rules, which might encourage workers to go to places like Alberta, where many current job openings remain unfilled.
“I’m for professional mobility, not just geographical mobility,” Conservative Senator and Quebec labour economist Diane Bellemare recently told The Globe and Mail. “I’m not against people going to Alberta. But EI does not promote professional mobility.”
At the same time, federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney has been telling employers in Western Canada that they can’t depend on temporary foreign workers (TFWs) to fill their labour needs.
That may win the Conservatives votes in Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes, but it’s only bound to dampen growth in the one part of the country that is prospering.
“It’s a dumb thing because, to the extent that Alberta is very successful, it helps to solve some of the issues in Eastern Canada, from a fiscal point of view. So it doesn’t make any sense to not encourage labour mobility,” says Leo de Bever, CEO of Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo).
“I often fly from Toronto to Edmonton in the evenings, and business class is full of guys who work in Fort McMurray. They come off the flight from St. John’s (Nfld.) and board in Toronto,” he says.
“That is inefficient, but I can see why the oil companies can afford it, because it’s the only way they can fill the labour hole here,” he adds.
“As for the temporary foreign worker problem, I think the feds are just playing politics, frankly, and I don’t think that’s smart. If you don’t like TFWs you can’t at the same time discourage labour mobility, because over long periods of time, that’s what happens. Just look at Detroit, which has lost half its population. You can regret that, but you can’t stop it, ultimately. If I was running a non-political national economic strategy, I would encourage mobility.”