07:00 03/07 (CEP News) Ottawa – Canada’s employment market hurtled past the expectations of analysts for a second straight month in February, adding 43,300 new jobs or nearly 15 times the consensus forecast of analysts.

Statistics Canada reported Friday that all the February growth was accounted for by the private sector, with Ontario’s construction industry leading the way. Full-time employment rose by 49,500 while 6,200 part-time positions disappeared during the month.

The gains came after similar growth of 46,400 jobs in January and brought the total number of new jobs created over the past 12 months to 361,000, or 2.2%. The consensus estimate of analysts was for a net gain of 3,000 jobs in February.

The additional jobs were enough to hold the unemployment rate steady at its 33-year low of 5.8% while the employment rate – the measure of Canadians working as a percentage of the total population aged 15 and over – soared to a new record high of 63.9%.

Ontario added 46,200 net jobs in the month, with much smaller gains reported in Saskatchewan, Quebec, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The other five provinces reported modest job losses, including 5,000 in Alberta and 2,000 in British Columbia.

The country’s hard-pressed manufacturing sector gave up 23,700 more jobs in February, bringing total losses over the last 12 months to 106,000 but the losses were largely offset by a gain of 20,800 construction jobs. StatsCan said manufacturing now represents 11.6% of total employment in Canada, down from 15% at the end of 2002.

Overall the goods producing sector lost 12,500 positions in February, while the service-producing sector added 55,800 jobs. The biggest gainers on the service side were public administration (+15,800), professional, scientific and technical services (+15,600) and trade (+14,100).

Average wages increased by a hefty 4.9% on an annual basis in February, the third straight month at that rate and the seventh month in a row that the figure has been at or above 4%.

Despite February job losses, employment in Alberta was up 3% or 58,000 from a year earlier, holding the western province’s unemployment rate at 3.5%, the lowest in the country. Saskatchewan and B.C. both reported an unemployment rate of 4.1% while Manitoba’s rate was 4.2%.

In Atlantic Canada, the jobless rate varied from a low of 7.7% in Nova Scotia to 13.1% in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The unemployment rate in Ontario was down two ticks to 6.1% and in Quebec it edged up to 7% from 6.8% in January.

By Geoff Matthews, gmatthews@economicnews.ca, edited by Stephen Huebl, shuebl@economicnews.ca

(END) ©CEP Newswires - ©CEP News Ltd. 2008. All Rights Reserved. www.economicnews.ca

Related recent stories

John Morrissy, Canwest News Service  Published: Friday, March 07, 2008

OTTAWA - A strong economy and and an aging population created a shortage in qualified labour that cut across every province and every sector in 2007, says the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

The shortage hit a record high last year, with 309,000 jobs remaining open for at least four months, said the group. Small or middle-sized companies represents 60 per cent of employment in Canada.

“Even with current economic uncertainties, Canadian demographics suggest that the shortage of qualified labour is a problem that is not going away anytime soon,” said Garth Whyte, the group’s executive vice-president.

“This is not a Western Canadian problem. It is affecting every province and underlines the need for long-term solutions.”

As a result of the labour shortage, Whyte said, businesses are forced to hire underqualified or inexperienced staff.

A major concern is that this is forcing businesses to pass up on prospects. In Alberta, for instance, where the long-term job vacancy rate has been stuck in a high range for years, 40% of members say as a result they don’t pursue new opportunities.

The problem in filling highly skilled jobs has been growing for years now, at a rate of 50% a year, and where once it affected one on four members, it now affects one in three, he said.

Whyte links the long-term job vacancy rate to recent census data showing that for the first time there are as many people in the workforce 40 or above as there are below 40. This means as many people leave the workforce as are now entering it.

Piecemeal government efforts to solve the problem cannot make up for the country’s lack of a long-term strategy to deal with it, Whyte said.

More than any other area, it is trades jobs - particularly construction - that are going unfilled, and Whyte questioned whether current immigration policies that favour university-educated immigrants needs to be revisited.

He also questioned whether the current unemployment program is doing a sufficient job of matching those out of work with jobs needing to be filled.

Moreover, he said, the country lacks a concerted training policy between business and provincial and federal governments.

Sectors hardest hit are the construction, hospitality, mining, forestry and agriculture sectors.

Believe it or not, there’s a labour shortage here

GREG LOCKE
Sun. Mar 2 - 6:19 AM

EVERYONE has heard stories about Newfoundland and Labrador workers fleeing to Alberta to find jobs, and bank economists insisting that the province’s economy is “leading the country in economic growth” while unemployment is still the highest in the country.

You would not think this is good news for workers in Newfoundland. In general, it’s not, especially in the skilled trades and professions.

Yet, in a backhanded way it means for the first time in the 500-year history of Newfoundland commerce workers have options and are no longer just “lucky to have a job” (a common phrase heard by all wage slaves here) at the mercy of minimum wage employers with hundreds of resumes on their desks.

Enough people have now left Newfoundland to cause a labour shortage.

If you had been shopping or eating out in St. John’s this past year you would have noticed a sprouting of Help Wanted signs in the retail outlets, restaurants and for other service sector jobs. Every couple of store windows on Water St. have hand scrawled pleas to fill jobs. Hard to believe, but there is a labour shortage in St. John’s.

Now, before you pack up the U-Haul and the kids and head for the ferry at North Sydney, consider the reason for these job openings.

People leave these jobs because they are the lowest-paid, lowest-benefits jobs available and let’s be honest, not all employers are created equal. Of course, there are some good ones but, sadly, too many Newfoundland employers still harbour the “merchant” mentality towards their workers.

These jobs are the first to be abandoned when better prospects present themselves.

Those prospects are now in Alberta, British Columbia and Yellowknife. If you have to work in retail, you might as well do it in Grande Prairie, Alta., for $15-20 per hour plus benefits instead of $7.50 and no benefits in Mount Pearl, N.L. Besides, that’s where all your family and friends are anyway.

The provincial government says it will raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour over the next two years and that has the Newfoundland and Labrador Employers Council howling in pain. They say there is no way they can stay in business if they have to pay a minimum wage that high.

Maybe they should ask themselves how can they stay in business if they don’t.

Some employers still have their heads in the sand and can’t accept that they will now have to compete for workers by offering better wages and benefits. If they don’t they can wave good-bye to their workers as they head across the big-box parking lot to a better employer . . . or the packed U-Haul truck.

Two members of the Employers Council were on a radio talk show recently moaning that they can’t understand why they can’t keep or get staff when there are so many unemployed people in Newfoundland.

A recent scan of the Service Canada job bank for Newfoundland and Labrador yielded over 500 job postings. Less than a dozen were in the $15 per hour range. The highest paid position offered ($19 per hour) was for an engineer. Over half were minimum wage service jobs or commissioned sales. Another quarter were between $8-10 per hour. The rest offered $11-13 per hour.

The full impact of this little economic tremour hasn’t fully hit yet but by the end of the tourist season this summer you will see a lot of service industry employers hurting.

Newfoundland employers are going to have to wake up or miss the boat . . . the boat carrying their employees to better jobs on the mainland.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotian/1041286.html

Newfoundland Diary appears every third week in The NovaScotian. Greg Locke is a journalist and photographer based in St. John’s.

Premier Ed Stelmach was lambasted Saturday for failing to stem the
flow of oilsands to the United States after regulatory approval was
given to another pipeline project that will ship Alberta bitumen
stateside.

“The Tories shrugged their shoulders and they’re
letting Albertans’ wealth go south of the border,” Alberta Liberal
Leader Kevin Taft said Saturday in Wainwright.

“They just let it go, and it’s a huge strategic opportunity (lost) for Alberta.”

On Friday, the National Energy Board approved the $3-billion Alberta
Clipper pipeline, which will initially ship up to 450,000 barrels of
bitumen a day out of Alberta to Wisconsin when it becomes operational
in mid-2010. The pipeline could accommodate up to 800,000 barrels a day
in the future.

The 1,600-kilometre Clipper pipeline is one of
several projects announced or approved in the past year that will see
oilsands upgraded or refined in the U.S., sending potentially billions
of investment dollars and thousands of value-added jobs down the
pipeline with the gooey, tar-like sands.

“It won’t be just raw
bitumen going down those pipelines — we’ll also be losing thousands of
high-paying upgrader and refinery jobs,” said Gil McGowan, president of
the Alberta Federation of Labour.

Stelmach has vowed since the
2006 Progressive Conservative leadership race that he’ll curb that
trend. He has compared the flow of bitumen and jobs to “scraping off
the top soil” from prime farmland.

But he has yet to implement any major proposals to achieve that end.

Campaigning
Saturday through resource-dependent regions in west-central Alberta,
Stelmach maintained he’s still committed to creating more value-added
jobs, but won’t force companies to follow his wishes.

He said
Alberta will continue to upgrade 60 to 65 per cent of its bitumen, as
oilsands development and processing grows in the future.

“It’s
one thing to say that we’re going to use a stick, but we have to
carefully look at what (free-trade) agreements we have in place,”
Stelmach told reporters in Hinton.

“We have to be very careful
how we proceed. The main thing is, we have to bring our costs down, and
that is by getting more tradespeople, and providing the housing and
infrastructure.”

Costs and growth pressures are slowing the
development of oilsands processing plants in Alberta and contributing
to more and more bitumen being exported, he added.

Stelmach has
previously suggested the bitumen processed in Alberta will rise to 72
per cent by 2016, spurred by new upgraders and the government’s
value-added plans, which are still in the works. The Tory leader has
also said it’s foolish to force energy companies to upgrade all their
bitumen in Alberta because it would sink the price of the product.

Alberta
produces about 1.3 million barrels of bitumen a day, with about 800,000
barrels, or 62 per cent, staying in Alberta and 500,000 barrels being
upgraded outside Canada.

Taft said the Conservatives have dropped
the ball by failing to bring in a comprehensive value-added policy that
would keep the jobs and oilsands in Alberta. He’d like to see bitumen
upgraded in Alberta, but said there’s benefit to shipping some of the
oilsands to other provinces, rather than losing it to the U.S.

But Greg Stringham, vice-president with Canadian Association of
Petroleum Producers, noted Albertans are receiving great benefits from
the oilsands processing already occurring in the province.

He
suggested the percentage of total bitumen processed in Alberta could
rise to more than 70 per cent by 2015, as the upgrading capacity comes
in line with oilsands development — about 3.5 million barrels per day.

“We’re
already getting great value here with the upgrading,” Stringham said.
“It’s going to come along with the oilsands development.”

Political observers, meanwhile, said the timing of the Clipper
pipeline announcement is like a slap in the face to Stelmach because
he’s been so public about the issue.

It shows the Tory leader
hasn’t been able to persuade big oil and gas companies to follow his
wishes, said David Taras, political analyst at the University of
Calgary.

“This was high on the hit parade during the leadership
race and now it seems to be a forgotten policy,” said Taras, suggesting
the energy board’s decision is another speed bump in Stelmach’s
campaign.

“One after another it’s become a nightmare campaign in
which almost two or three times a week there’s a shock to the campaign
and it always seems to be bad news.”

NDP Leader Brain Mason and
labour groups immediately went on the offensive, arguing Stelmach is
breaking one of his biggest political promises by sitting on his hands
while new pipelines are built to export an Alberta product.

The
National Energy Board has approved $10.4 billion in new international
oilsands delivery routes since September 2007, including the
$5.2-billion Keystone Pipeline by TransCanada PipeLines; the $3-billion
Alberta Clipper and the $2.2-billion Southern Lights projects, both by
Enbridge Inc.

The Keystone project alone will export 18,000 jobs
to the U.S., predicts a consultants’ report done for the federation
when it unsuccessfully fought the proposal at NEB hearings.

Among
major participants in the emerging international oilsands network,
EnCana Corp. ships bitumen to ConocoPhillips refineries in Texas and
Illinois.

Husky Energy scrapped a planned $2.3-billion addition
to its Lloydminster heavy-crude upgrader and will ship its bitumen to a
BP refinery in Ohio. Marathon Oil is expanding a Detroit plant to
handle newly acquired Fort McMurray production.

Jason Fekete, Gordon Jaremko,
Calgary Herald; Edmonton Journal; With files from Heath McCoy, Calgary Herald; and Archie McLean, Journal staff

Two local companies have been recognized provincially as top employers of Aboriginal apprentices.
Syndrude Canada has received the award within the large company market,
while B.G. Industrial Doctor received the award for small companies.
Greg Whalen, owner of the Anzac-based B.G. Industrial, said “Our
company specializes in the reliability of rotating equipment, we are
vibrational analysts, so our apprentices receive specialized training.”
“I actually did not know about the award until they called to ask me if
I wanted to RSVP. But it was nice to receive the recognition.
“I am actively recruiting Aboriginals, and local people to take the
apprenticeship, so I am kind of honored that the Alberta Apprenticeship
and Industry Training Board recognized the work I have done with the
apprentices.”
Whalen added if “it wasn’t for the support of companies like
ConocoPhillips, Surmont and Encana, Christina Lake then I wouldn’t be
able to take in the apprentices and bring them up through the system.”

By VERNA MURPHY
Today staff
Wednesday February 20, 2008

Albertatradesmen.com is very happy to announce a general invitation to companies in Edmonton, Calgary, Fort McMurray to post their trades related job. Currently, our categories include trade jobs for carpenters, concrete finishers, handyman, electricians, labourers, management, mechanics, millwrights, painters, pipefitters, plumbers and roofers. We are willing to add another category for you if you would like. Please fill out the brief form below and one of our staff members will call you ASAP. Thank-you!

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Economic Overview
The late 2007-early 2008 slowdown or recession in the U.S. will have
spillover implications for Canada. Canada’s real Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) growth in 2007 was around 2.5%. In 2008, it will likely come in
slightly under 2.0%. The Canadian economy has performed better of late
than the U.S. economy for three primary reasons. Going forward, these
factors will help Canada to continue to do relatively better than the
U.S. in 2008.

(1) High world commodity prices have been a boon for Canada’s large
resource sector. This is particularly true with respect to the price of
oil, which has been a stimulus to capital spending in the Alberta Tar
Sands. High commodity prices generally have also helped Canada maintain
a substantial merchandise trade surplus, while the U.S. is running a
large goods trade deficit.

(2) Canadian housing starts have stayed strong almost right up to
the present. The proportion of subprime and teaser-rate mortgages in
Canada is much lower than south of the border. This has had
wide-ranging positive impacts in that strong residential construction
has carryover implications for manufacturing and the retail sector.
Also, Canada’s employment picture has been relatively stronger because
there have not been the job losses in homebuilding. Canada created
375,000 new jobs in 2007, which was twice the long-term annual average
of 200,000.

(3) Canadian governments have been in better financial shape than
their southern counterparts. The federal government and all of the
provinces are running budget surpluses. The federal government has
initiated a program of substantial corporate tax cuts over the next
five years and there have been moderate personal tax cuts as well. The
federal Goods and Services Tax has been scaled back twice (from 7% to
5%) over the past year and some of the provinces (Québec) have also
brought in large tax reductions. Governments in Canada have rarely been
in better shape financially to undertake the public spending that is
necessary for both “hard” (highways and bridges, sewers and watermains)
and “soft” (schools and hospitals) infrastructure.

Construction Categories

Residential
Housing starts in Canada for all of 2007 were 230,000 units. They have
been over 200,000 units for the past six years. In the final month of
last year, however, they dropped to 187,500 units. Canadian housing
starts have stayed strong even as U.S. starts have plummeted more than
50% from their peak at the beginning of 2006.

In 2008, housing starts in Canada will begin to slow. CanaData’s
forecast is for 195,000 units. Real dollar spending on residential
activity is forecast at -3.0% this year, which will be virtually level
in current-dollar spending terms after inflation is taken into account.
The strength in residential work over the next two years will be as a
result of renovation work. Exceptional levels of housing resales or
sales of existing homes during the past couple of years will mean
lag-effect spending on upgrades and remodeling.

Commercial
Put-in-place spending for commercial construction is at its cyclical
peak in 2007 and 2008 (+11.0% in real dollars in both years). (An
assumed 5.0% increase in prices for non-residential construction costs
can be added to this to calculate the current dollar percent change).
Commercial starts in 2008 (48.0 million square feet) are likely to be
lower than in 2007 (55.0 million), due to some changes in sub-category
markets.

Office vacancy rates in Canada — 5.0% downtown, 8.0% in the suburbs
and 6.5% metro-wide — continue to be lower than in the United States
(15.0% overall). However, some moderation is coming in office-based
employment and there have recently been starts on a number of large
office building projects, particularly in Calgary and Toronto.

Retail construction will continue to be relatively buoyant, but as
employment growth slows and the housing sector starts to retreat, there
will be some restraint in consumer spending going forward. Consumers
are also being held back by high gasoline and heating fuel prices,
although this effect is muted in Canada by the international pricing of
oil in U.S. dollars.

Hotel and motel work is strong at this time, as it is south of the
border. However, the high-valued Canadian dollar does reduce the
prospects for foreign travel and accommodation needs.

Industrial
Real investment in industrial construction is expected to increase 3.5%
in 2008 after an increase of 4.4% in 2007. Starts will drop from 6.5
million square feet last year to 5.5 million this year.

The strength in industrial construction will continue to reside in
the resource sector. This includes projects related to mining,
agriculture and oil and gas (that is not otherwise categorized as
engineering work). These projects often involve dollar spending, but no
square footage for buildings. The only weak resource area at this time
is the forestry sector, due to the decline in U.S. housing starts and
an anticipated (but much smaller) cutback in Canada as well.

The problem limiting construction activity in this category is
manufacturing. The year-over-year change in employment in manufacturing
was -6.5% in December 2007. The capacity utilization rate for the
sector continues above 80.0%, but problems linger. The increase in
value of the Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar (+70% versus early
2003) holds back export sales to the U.S.

This effect will be exasperated by the slowdown in the U.S., plus
some changes on the domestic front. Weaker homebuilding will cut into
related building product manufacturing. In addition, auto sales have
been strong for many years and are set for a correction.

Institutional
Real institutional spending, backed by strong government balance
sheets, is expected to be +7.0% in 2008 versus +6.0% in 2007.
Population shifts to the west over the recent past have meant a need
for facilities spending in the areas of schools and hospitals.
Demographic change and the ability of governments to finance
construction are the driving forces in this construction category.

More private sector involvement through P3 (public-private
partnership) projects and other innovative financing and
project-management alternatives increase the potential for work to be
undertaken in the area of projects for the public good.

Aging baby boomers require increasing medical care and their
children are raising the demand for capital projects at the level of
higher education. The number of children enrolled at primary and
secondary school levels is expected to be flat-to-lower nation-wide for
the next ten years. The square footage of institutional starts was 26.0
million in 2007 and it will stay at a similar level in 2008.

Engineering
Real spending on engineering construction will be about +4.0% in 2008,
a figure in line with the long-term trend pattern for this sector. The
problem for this category of work has been, and will continue to be,
supply constraints as opposed to demand issues.

Energy projects will continue to dominate engineering construction.
A new federal-provincial revenue-sharing agreement will stimulate more
work on the Atlantic Coast and the Alberta Tar Sands continue to enjoy
boom times. Given oil prices at $100 U.S. per barrel, mega Tar Sands
projects would be going ahead even faster except for labour shortages
and some delivery/access problems to remote areas. There is likely to
be some further delay of these projects due to scary cost escalations
and the fact that Alberta’s government is proposing a new higher
royalty regime.

A new era is about to get underway in mega electric power projects.
There are proposals for massive spending in almost every region of the
country. Québec, Manitoba and British Columbia are particularly strong
in hydroelectric power potential. Ontario plans major new nuclear
facilities and Alberta is also looking at nuclear as a means to supply
electricity to the Tar Sands.

Engineering work also includes “hard” infrastructure projects. B.C.
is preparing for the 2010 Winter Olympics, plus it is also proposing a
new major long-term transportation spending initiative. In the east,
concern over the safety of aging infrastructure as a result of some
high-profile bridge collapses, has spurred on the creation of special
agencies to see that essential repair work gets done.

The plans for infrastructure spending may be subject to some
re-assessment, however, if the economic slowdown takes too big a bite
out of government revenues.

Grand Total Summary
As a final comment, the mix of weaker residential construction activity
combined with still-strong non-residential building and engineering
work will see total real construction spending in Canada increase by
2.0% in 2008 and 2009. This will be about half the level of increase
that was recorded in 2007.

http://www.reedconstructiondata.com/news/2008/02/economic-and-construction-outlooks-for-canada-in-2008/

Powered by ScribeFire.

Jan 28, 2008

OTTAWA - The Canadian economy created an abundance of high-paying,
high-quality jobs last year to offset the loss in the battered
manufacturing sector, says a new study by the Canadian Imperial Bank of
Commerce.

The bank said Monday that the economy created an
impressive 400,000 new jobs last year and “the vast majority of them
were in high-paying sectors.”

This is in contrast to the bad news
coming out of the manufacturing sector, which shed about 130,000 jobs
in 2007, and in contrast to what is happening in the United States.

The
bank said its employment quality index, which combines part-time and
full-time jobs, as well as self-employment, rose by 2.8 per cent last
year - the largest increase since 1999 - whereas it dropped 1.9 per
cent in the U.S.

“It seems that in Canada the loss of
manufacturing jobs is being offset by job gains in sectors with
equivalent and higher employment quality,” said the bank.

“That’s
not the case in the U.S., where the jobs now being lost in sectors such
as construction/real estate and manufacturing are being replaced by
lower quality jobs.”

The credit for making up the losses in
manufacturing goes mostly to a 3.6 per cent increase in the number of
full-time employees in high-paying sectors such as oil and gas
extraction, the public service and computer services.

As would be
expected, Alberta and Saskatchewan led the way in job gains in the
energy industries, where earnings run 50 to 125 per cent higher than
the industrial average.

Meanwhile, jobs in low-paying industries such as general merchandise stores, textiles and furniture-making dropped 1.2 per cent.

“The
combination of rising employment and improving quality is a sure recipe
for rising personal income, which as of the third quarter of 2007, rose
by more than six per cent (over 2006),” the report states.

There
were some negative trends in the index, including that self-employment
rose three times faster than paid employment last year. Typically,
self-employed workers earn about 80 per cent of the average of
full-time paid employees.

And the bank said it expects the
quality index to decline somewhat in the first half of 2008 as the
slowing economy pushes more individuals into the self-employment
sector, and into part-time jobs.

The bank added that it is
unlikely the public sector, including health care and education, will
continue to create jobs at the high rate those sectors managed in 2007.

For
years, the Canadian economy has benefited from strong growth in the
energy sector and agriculture industries in Western Canada as well as
homebuilding and related sectors across the country. That has helped
offset losses in the restructuring auto industry and manufacturing
sector, centred in Ontario and Quebec.

Critics of government
industrial policies have called for more strategic investments for
manufacturing and revamped trade policy to increase exports to foreign
markets, especially auto sales to South Korea and other Asian markets.

However,
the federal government argues that troubled manufacturers are being
hurt by a high Canadian dollar and are part of a global restructuring
of blue-collar industres, with jobs shifting to low-wage countries in
Asia and Latin America.

Moreover, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty
has said Ottawa’s cuts to corporate, personal and the GST will help
Canadian companies become more competitive and attract new investment.

At
a business conference Monday in Toronto, Flaherty said Canada’s
economic fundamentals remain strong despite a slowing job market.

“The
consensus is that 2008 is shaping up to be a tough year,” he told a
conference on corporate takeovers. “There has been significant
turbulence in the capital markets, not only here in Canada but abroad,
growth projections globally are being adjusted downward, but I can tell
you this: when they (economists and forecasters) look at our Canada,
they are amazed at how right we are in terms of our economic
fundamentals, and how favourably we compare in fact with our large
neighbour to the south”.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Last Updated:Wednesday, January 23, 2008 | 5:31 PM MT

CBC News

All temporary foreign workers coming to Alberta should be provided
training in English to ensure they can do their jobs safely, says a
labour organization that represents 50,000 construction workers.

The
Alberta Building Trades Council is hearing more stories of foreign
workers being injured on the job, Gerry Donnelly, the government
relations officer for the trades council recently told CBC News.

Many of those injuries were likely caused because not all
employees understand safety procedures due to a language barrier, he
added.

“I immigrated to Canada in 1978 and I found it difficult with the
terminology, and the whole safety culture is different to the one I was
familiar with in Europe where I worked,” Donnelly said.

“I can only imagine if I was to go work in Brazil, for example, or
go and work in China or in the Philippines. I don’t know how I would
deal with the language. I would have some serious concerns about how I
would recognize a sign that alerts me to a safety hazard.”

Temporary foreign workers are not eligible for government-sponsored
English language training provided to people immigrating to Canada,
said Jim Gurnett, who works with Edmonton’s Mennonite Centre for
Newcomers.

More than 22,000 workers from countries including India, Poland and
China are working in Alberta restaurants, the oilsands and the
construction industry under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program.

Almost 500 of those workers were injured in the province last year, according to the Alberta Workers’ Compensation Board.

One of them, Caesar Saenz, injured his head with a chainsaw in
January 2007 after being told by his boss to cut a piece of pipe, even
though he had never used the equipment, and had no protective gear.

“You know, I tell him. I say, ‘I don’t know how to use the
chainsaw.’ Saenz told CBC. “He says, ‘Don’t worry. It’s easy. Do it.
It’s easy don’t worry. Just press the button and cut the pipe. That’s
all. It’s easy.’ … I was very, very, very scared because there was lots
of blood.”

Saenz was rushed to the hospital and needed 36 stitches to sew up
the gash. He was left with scarring on his face. Provincial officials
are investigating the accident.

“Those stories not only make you sad. They make you sick to your
stomach,” said Alberta Employment Minister Iris Evans, who set up a
team of investigators in December to check on companies that employ
foreign temporary workers.

The team, which includes eight health and safety inspectors located
in offices in Edmonton and Calgary, has handled 160 calls and those led
to 22 work site inspections.

But the minister said she doesn’t see a need for mandatory English-language training.

“Most temporary foreign workers in Canada are speaking English,” Evans said.

Powered by ScribeFire.

KITCHENER, ON, Feb. 11 /CNW/ - Kitchener Frame, owned by MartinreaInternational, announced it may be closing its doors in April 2009, putting800 workers out of a job. Another 400 are currently on lay-off from the plant,which produces automotive frames. CAW Local 1451 members who work in the office and the plant received thedevastating news yesterday at a membership meeting. The union is pressingMartinrea to extend the life of the facility to secure employment for themembers. CAW Local 1451 President Mike Devine tied the closure announcement to thesoaring Canadian dollar and unbalanced trade, both of which are making itdifficult to compete and easier for companies to pull the plug on theirCanadian operations. Last April, Devine had an impromptu meeting with Prime Minister StephenHarper at a local Royal Canadian Legion branch, where he and other CAWactivists were demonstrating outside. At the meeting, Harper suggested that unemployed workers ought to look to Alberta to find employment. TheKitchener-Waterloo region has lost more than 8,000 manufacturing jobs in thelast two years alone. “This government must come up with real solutions to address job loss andthe de-industrialization of our communities,” said Devine. “People cannot beexpected to uproot their families and move to another province because theCanadian government is sitting on its hands.” The facility used to produce frames for three General Motors assemblyplants, but now only supplies one. Current products - the GMC Envoy and TrailBlazer have not yet been replaced, according to Hemi Mitic, assistant to theCAW president. “The government must develop an auto policy that includes notonly auto assembly, but also auto parts manufacturing so the industry can berebuilt,” said Mitic. The plant opened in 1966 (under the Canada-U.S. Auto Pact) and employedover 3,000 workers at its peak in 1979. Martinrea has operations in Canada,the United States, Mexico and Europe.