The Town of Bonnyville stepped up in a big way for the local business community last week when council agreed to provide $5,000 to the regional Chronic Labour Shortage Committee to help the organization fund a “vital” research project.
For the best part of a year, local businessman Sal Naim has led local business owners and entrepreneurs on a crusade against the federal government in an attempt to find a resolution to the region's “chronic labour shortage.”
That crusade, which initially began when the federal government first placed a moratorium on the much-maligned Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP) and then made “crippling” changes to it, has seen local community leaders step up and form a regional task force, spend money out of their own pocket to hire a renowned provincial lobbyist group, and now take the next step in their fight with the feds.
“I'm here today as a follow up to a letter we sent to the Town earlier this month to basically ask for assistance in helping us fund a research component in our efforts to show the federal government what kind of issues we're dealing with here (in northeastern Alberta),” Naim told Town Council last week.
“The (regional) labour shortage committee has been very vocal and active over the past few months in doing whatever we can to lobby the federal government to come up with a solution for our very unique needs,” he added.
According to Naim, this issue has long evolved from being about the impact the changes to the TFWP will have on the local community into a longstanding genuine concern regarding the long-term viability of businesses in a region experiencing a “chronic labour shortage.”
“Although this group formed essentially out of the changes (the federal government) made to the TFWP, we're not focusing on that specific issue because our issues are not derived from that specific issue,” Naim said. “Our issues are derived from the fact we don't have enough people in our community to fill jobs (in the service industry).”
Naim said the TFWP has simply served as a “band-aid” to the real problems in the Lakeland over the past few years, and that the committee, with the help of the provincial and federal governments, needed to come up with a long-term, viable solution to the local labour shortage.
In an attempt to help move things along, the committee has spent much of the past six months gathering data they hope to use to show the federal government just how desperate the situation is in the Lakeland.
“We've paid to have a survey done in our area, which many of our local businesses participated in, and this is just the next step in our (research component) to ensure we have real, live data and information relating to our area,” Naim said.
The total cost of the research component was $35,000.
Bonnyville Mayor Gene Sobolewski was quick to offer his support to Naim and the local committee, stating the business sector was the “lifeblood” of the community and the municipality has a responsibility to ensure they are doing what they can to help local business thrive.
“I'm in support of providing funding because the sustainability of our community is shouldered by local business,” Sobolewski said. “The vibrancy and success of our community (comes as a direct result) of the success of (our) business (sector).”
With much of council in agreement that the municipality should get on board with helping the committee in its fight against the federal government, Coun. Nestor Kunec said he'd like to see the entire community get behind the group and support them through these “tough times.”
“This is essentially a political lobby, and for that, especially since it's against the federal government, I feel like everyone in the community needs to get on board and support this,” Kunec said. “We need to make sure (we're unified locally) in our fight, because if we're not, it will be easy (for the federal government) to come up with excuses.”
Both the MD of Bonnyville and the City of Cold Lake have received similar requests to provide $5,000 to help pay for the research component of the lobby. The MD expects to make a decision sometime in March, while the City has asked the labour shortage committee to provide more information before they decide whether or not to support the project.
