Canada’s Oil-Sand Fields Need U.S. Workers, Alberta Minister Says
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By Jeremy van Loon - Sep 7, 2011 12:02 AM ET
Unemployed U.S. construction workers should look for jobs in Canada’s oil-sands industry, which faces a shortage of as many as 75,000 positions in the next few years, Alberta Energy Minister Ronald Liepert said.
Alberta’s oil sands, the world’s third-largest recoverable reserve of crude, needs workers including electricians and construction staff, Liepert said in an interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York late yesterday. Labor restrictions between Canada and the U.S. need to be eliminated first, he said.
“This is one way of solving the unemployment problem,” he said. “I really hope as two countries we can come to some sort of ability to move people back and forth. If we’re short 50,000 to 75,000 workers there would be no problem finding those workers here in the U.S.”
U.S. President Barack Obama will address Congress tomorrow with a plan to boost job growth by injecting more than $300 billion into the economy next year. Unemployment in the world’s largest economy remains at 9.1 percent more than two years after the recession’s official end. That compares with 7.2 percent in Canada.
Alberta faces potential inflation as the oil-sands industry, the largest source of revenue for the province, prepares to almost double production over the next decade, the minister said. Allowing U.S. workers, many of whom share a similar culture and speak the same language, would help reduce that risk, he said.
“This is an opportunity that wasn’t here five years ago when we were both in an overheated economy and we were bringing in workers from different countries that had different cultures,” said Liepert. “To me it makes total sense that the first opportunity should be for Americans.”
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