B.C. will need 25,700 out-of-province construction workers in the next decade

VANCOUVER—An authority on Canada’s construction labour force says British Columbia has the potential to grow more construction jobs than any other province — but the B.C. government will need “aggressive” recruitment practices and a strategy to attract workers from outside the province to make it happen.

BuildForce Canada, a national organization that produces regular reports forecasting the needs of Canada’s construction labour market, published a 10-year outlook report last week that predicts the province will need 62,200 recruits in the next decade.

The agency projected 36,500 of those would be young people from B.C. getting started in the industry. That leaves 25,700 workers who will likely have to come from outside the province.

Bill Ferreira, executive director of BuildForce, said construction booms that have taken place in other parts of the country and then cooled off have left workforces that could now be available to work in B.C.

“In the next four years there will be a dramatic amount of construction occurring,” Ferreira said about the province. “There are going to be gaps either way.”

That’s because the 62,200 figure only refers to the province’s “base” labour-force needs in the next decade. It’s going to need thousands more during construction “peaks” brought on by the overlapping of enormous industrial projects like the Site C dam, the LNG Canada export facility in Kitimat and the planned Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, among others.

“What you don’t want to do is expand the workforce dramatically at peak,” Ferreira said, because after work on the major projects ends, there won’t be jobs left for all the new workers.

“In all likelihood they’re going to have to be addressed by bringing in people from other provinces, the U.S. or other parts of the world on a temporary basis.”

In the case of the $40-billion LNG Canada project, the owner has publicly promised to hire Canadians first.

Ferreira said one recommendation BuildForce has made to recruit more Canadian workers is to look in segments of the population that have been traditionally under-represented in construction: including women, Indigenous people and new Canadians.

LNG Canada, for its part, has offered training opportunities for Indigenous people and other groups since 2015. The province’s strategy to increase construction trainees includes a community benefits agreement framework, which requires contractors building public-sector projects to hire a certain proportion of apprentices for each project.

Ferreira said the industry’s biggest challenge over the next decade will simply be replacing workers who retire quickly enough. That’s being felt across the country, with a 10-year record low number of unemployed construction workers.

“I don’t know if anybody was forecasting that, but the economy was certainly firing on all cylinders,” he said.

Sourced From: Alex McKeen is a Vancouver-based reporter covering wealth and work. Follow her on Twitter: @alex_mckeen

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