Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training Shirley Bond came through Kitimat on June 19, checking out local projects and talking with the District.
She called her visit a chance to reconnect to the local council, and she met the mayor and District staff at the Mr. Mikes restaurant, one of Kitimat’s success stories with its rapid growth in hiring people, according to Bond.
On the big picture of industrial development she said there is challenges in moving the workforce to new projects as they come online.
“One of the things I’ve asked our staff to look at is, we have a workforce here at Rio Tinto that’s used to working here and they’ve worked very hard to retain and to train so we are looking at things like transition, how do you take workers from one project and move them to another one?” she said. “In fact when you look here at the Shell circumstance they’re literally neighbours with one another. We are talking about how we’re going to keep a workforce that’s already engaged working in a region of the province they’re familiar with.”
For smaller-scale businesses, she said the government needs to encourage people to move to the region so there is an adequate service industry workforce.
Monaghan said its beneficial whenever a government minister visits as its that much more effective in sharing the town’s message.