But employers not expecting severe labour shortage
For Seacliff Construction, the last few years have been a whirlwind. Thanks to the building boom in the lead up to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games, the company — which operates in five provinces and was involved in construction of the Richmond speed skating oval, the media centre and renovation of B.C. Place stadium — was able to weather the recession.
Once the Games are over, there is going to be some immediate impact to growth, says Bill Crarer, CEO of Seacliff Construction, but it won’t be a long-term issue, due to some recovery in the commercial sector and early signs of recovery in high-rise residential construction.
“It obviously has some impact, because it’s work that is going to disappear from the marketplace but, having said that, we see other areas starting to emerge,” he says.
“Things are generally positive and, you know, as the work picks up, we’ll certainly be looking to increase employment.”
Economic forecasts point to British Columbia and Saskatchewan leading the country in economic growth in 2010, but this likely won’t mean a labour shortage, say employers.
All 10 provinces are projected to expand in 2010, with Western Canada leading the way, according to an RBC Economics report released in the fall.
While B.C.’s economy is expected to decline by two per cent in 2009, real gross domestic product (GDP) is forecast to grow by 4.2 per cent in 2010, according to the Conference Board of Canada’s fall 2009 provincial outlook.
The recovery should be buoyed by a comeback in the construction sector, recoveries in forestry and manufacturing, as well as tourism, retail sales and job creation resulting from the Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
Meanwhile, real GDP has declined 2.6 per cent in Saskatchewan since the start of 2009, resulting from an almost 65-per-cent decline in the production of potash, used to make fertilizers in the agriculture sector, notes the Conference Board.
However, a rebound in potash production is expected this year, resulting in a forecast of 3.7-per-cent growth for the province’s economy in 2010.
Saskatchewan’s expected rebound in 2010 follows the fall in the demand for potash in 2009, which removed almost $1 billion from the province’s economy, says Marie-Christine Besnard, associate director of provincial outlook at the Conference Board of Canada.
While the question still exists on when exactly the potash market will rebound, it will probably occur by the middle of 2010, she says.
“If it rebounds, that will help the Saskatchewan economy a lot but there is a lot of uncertainty at the moment as to when exactly it will rebound. Saskatchewan has not signed big contracts yet for potash,” says Besnard.
On average, Canada’s nine leading economic forecasters are projecting an economic growth rate of 2.8 per cent for the province in 2010, tied with B.C. for the best in Canada, according to Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Finance. The province led Canada with growth of 4.4 per cent in 2008, according to Statistics Canada.
As with other Western provinces, with the rapid growth in 2007 and 2008, Saskatchewan experienced labour shortages for the first time, says a report on the province’s labour market strategy released in early 2009 by the Saskatchewan Labour Market Commission.
Western Economic Diversification reported last year that neither B.C. nor Alberta were able to meet the labour demands of the expanding economies, while the populations of Manitoba and Saskatchewan were also facing serious labour shortages.
However, next year’s expected growth numbers do not mean employers in Saskatchewan should expect another labour shortage, said Jacques Marcil, a senior economist at the Canada West Foundation, a non-partisan organization that explores public policy issues of particular interest to Western Canadians.
Saskatchewan is seeing a population boom, he says, and in 2008 it experienced its biggest increase in population in 50 years, driven partly by the potash and oil and gas industries.
“With those growth numbers, it doesn’t mean at all that there’s going to be something like that, because that growth is really just rebound effects from the drop this year. It’s not as if all of a sudden B.C. or Saskatchewan are going to overheat,” he says.
Indeed, the success of the Alberta oilsands projects created staffing challenges in 2007 and 2008, says Kaylynn Schroeder, vice-president of human resources at Saskatchewan-based uranium producer Cameco.
But now, as these projects are not hiring as much or actually letting people go, Cameco is confident it will be able to hire the people it needs in a timely manner, says Schroeder.
Meanwhile, in B.C.’s retail sector, demand was also strong, according to Jerry McGillivray, store group manager for Western Canada at Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC).
“Even a year ago, like everybody else, especially in Western Canada, we really had a hard time getting enough people coming into the stores dropping off applications. We were able to meet our staffing standards for each store, but it was a bit of a struggle.”
However, every MEC store currently has an excess of resumés, he says.
Although the company is optimistic, it is still being cautious in taking the viewpoint the economy has completely turned the corner, says McGillivray.
However, particularly on the West Coast, MEC has seen some really good growth in its business, especially over the last six months and is expecting to see a spike as a result of the Olympics, in the order of two to five per cent.
B.C. will probably see slightly weaker growth after the Olympics are over, however, there will be some lasting effects from publicity, which should help the tourism industry throughout the year, says Besnard.
“There’s going to be a blip in growth in B.C. in 2010 because there’s going to be extra tourism and there’s going to be temporary employment for a number of people for the Games — that will be in the short term, but there’s going to be a long-term effect” from investment in transportation and urban renewal, says Marcil.
Helen Burnett-Nichols is a Toronto-based freelance writer.
