Atlantic Canada decries immigration cuts amid labour shortages

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Steve Jamieson had no choice but to look outside the country for workers.

The electrical contractor in Prince Edward Island is short five electricians and because his business is running flat out, he’s often forced to take a pass on more work due to a lack of workers. That also means projects take more time to finish and his company is spending more money to get things done, as are his clients.

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Jamieson was able to recruit three electricians from the United Kingdom, but they haven’t shown up yet, even though the process started six months ago.

“We’re trying to grow our business, but you can only grow if you have the staff,” he said. “There’s work that we pass on because we don’t have the staff to get the job done in a timely manner.”

Like many Atlantic Canadian employers, Jamieson is facing a daunting challenge: an aging workforce in a region that already has the oldest population in the country. The construction industry is losing many people to retirement and they are not being replaced fast enough.

More immigration would help stop the bleeding, Jamieson said. As a result, he’s concerned about the federal government’s planned cuts to immigration. Canada will accept 395,000 permanent residents next year, down from 485,000 this year. More cuts will follow in 2026 and 2027, with just 380,000 and 365,000, respectively, allowed in.

Business people in Atlantic Canada say the region has room to grow, but is facing a shrinking labour pool, which is hurting growth.

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All but one of the Atlantic provinces are projected to see slower gross domestic product (GDP) growth next year because fewer people will be arriving, mostly due to immigration cuts. The region is facing shortages of pharmacists, health-care workers and heavy equipment operators, to name just a few.

That’s why Ottawa must prioritize skilled labour immigrants, Jamieson said. There’s a wide-ranging demand across the construction industry for carpenters and electricians to plumbers and bricklayers.

“There are people who want to come here, skilled people that can help out immediately,” he said.

Sam Sanderson, general manager of the Construction Association of Prince Edward Island, said Atlantic Canada is short about 6,000 to 7,000 skilled workers. The shortfall means that major projects are being delayed.

Contractors in the region are barely keeping up with demand. Earlier this year, his association polled 200 companies in Atlantic Canada and found out more than half have stopped bidding on contracts because of staff shortages.

Now is not the time to cut back on skilled labour, Sanderson said.

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“Any time you make any cuts to an immigration pathway with the potential to recruit skilled labour, it’s certainly detrimental,” he said. “The construction sector has never been under more demand and stress than it is right now.”

The federal government’s ambitious housing plan calls for 3.87 million new homes to be built by 2031, but a recent TD Economics report echoes some of Sanderson’s concerns.

“Homebuilding is facing worker shortages, the workforce appears stretched thin as is and residential developers must compete with non-residential projects for tradespeople,” the report said.

“Tradespeople are also getting older, have earlier retirement ages, and recent newcomers (the driving force behind Canada’s population growth) have gone into construction at a lesser rate than other industries.”

That’s why Ottawa needs to be more strategic in its approach to immigration, business players say.

The Atlantic provinces’ four construction associations have organized recruitment drives in places such as the U.K., Ireland and, most recently, Mexico in September. Sanderson said there were 900 people interested in coming to the region, all of whom he said he’d love to see working in the industry.

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Even when employers find the right candidate, they are faced with an arduous application process that can take up to two years to complete, he said, adding that’s time contractors can’t afford to lose.

“If you want to build a successful construction industry, you have to have the resources to do it,” Sanderson said. “Money is never going to solve this problem. It’s about people — skilled, qualified people — to help us build Canada.”

An aging population isn’t just a problem for construction.

Ather Akbari, an economics professor at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, said there are labour force gaps in low-skill and high-skill sectors, in health care, construction and elsewhere. Governments, he said, need to pay attention to where the need is most urgent, such as Atlantic Canada.

Ottawa said the immigration cuts were needed to ease the housing shortage in the country. But Akbari said the Liberal government helped create the problem by not properly planning for the influx of new arrivals. The necessary housing and other infrastructure were not in place.

Policymakers must take the long view and focus on distributing new arrivals where they are needed, he said.

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“I don’t know if this cut is just a correction factor or if this is because of the problems … like the housing crisis, for example, or health-care demand or infrastructure,” he said. “But the governments should have been prepared for this.”

Newfoundland and Labrador has oldest population in the country, which has Wanda Cuff-Young concerned. She’s vice-president of Work Global Canada Inc., an international recruiting agency based in St. John’s, Nfld. She said the province can’t afford any immigration cuts.

“It’s going backwards,” she said. “There was not a lot of consideration put into what are the various needs in our country or our economy that is so big and diverse.”

The province maxed out its immigration allotment last year and is on track to do the same this year. The Newfoundland and Labrador government asked Ottawa for a 15 per cent increase to its allocation for this year, but was denied, even though Cuff-Young said the province has major mining and oil and gas projects underway that will require skilled workers from overseas.

“We need to keep people here that will be buying homes, buying cars, getting children into schools and driving the economy,” she said. An aging workforce simply can’t sustain the province’s economy. There’s a tsunami coming whether we’re prepared or not.”

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The Atlantic provinces’ economies have been surging in large part because of immigration, Louis-Philippe Gauthier, the Atlantic vice-president at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said. He said the cuts have the potential to push the provinces back to a time when they were just managing economic decline.

“In Atlantic Canada, the conversation is that we are facing a demographic reality (and) our economies depend on immigration,” he said. “That has to be part of the overall national conversation. You can’t just have a one-size-fits-all conversation.”

• Email: arankin@postmedia.com

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