The details of the proposal for a temporary (3 year) 200-bed worker camp within 亚洲天堂 Lake village limits were revealed at village council. It doesn鈥檛 sound like there are any insurmountable hurdles to the proposal.
It鈥檚 not the 2100-bed worker camp proposed to be built within Kitimat village limits recently - Kitimat council debated the merits of that proposal last week - but it鈥檚 a big influx of workers for a town the size of 亚洲天堂 Lake.
On the positive side, I haven鈥檛 talked to anyone who doesn鈥檛 appreciate the influx of wages that will invariably be spent locally to some, probably considerable, degree.
Yes, the camp will have a kitchen, but how could it not? Nobody would spend weeks, months or years living in a facility where they had to eat every meal out. I鈥檇 wager that local restaurants, bars, and cafes will still enjoy a substantial increase in revenue.
Having the camp in town is a good idea. It could have been proposed for some location outside of village limits and that certainly wouldn鈥檛 have benefitted local merchants and service providers as well as having it right in town.
亚洲天堂 Lake is so small it isn鈥檛 on the radar of people who don鈥檛 live in the Northwest corridor between Prince George and Prince Rupert. Having workers relocate directly in town will open a lot of eyes to what the village and the region has to offer. Families will visit and maybe more than a few will decide to make 亚洲天堂 Lake a permanent home.
People will ask how the mini-construction boom that necessitates a temporary camp will benefit locals if so much labour is anticipated to come in from out of town. To ask the same question another way, how can a region with the persistently highest unemployment rates in the province still require workers from elsewhere to meet employer demand?
Half the answer lays in the nature of supply and demand. With so many projects getting of the ground at once, there is not enough locally trained and qualified individuals to meet demand. Construction workers are a mobile group out of necessity.
I remember RVs with improvised ladder racks and work trailers migrating to Edmonton during the housing boom of the late 1990s in Alberta. A crew of carpenter鈥檚 helpers can鈥檛 build a house without a lead-hand and a boss, so workforce mobility is built in to any construction cycle anywhere.
The other half of the answer? Apparently it鈥檚 a mystery. Ask a politician or ministry spokesperson to explain why the unemployment rate in the Northwest sits stubbornly between 10 and 12 per cent, and you will get a non-answer.
If the camp is built, some will complain that unemployment remains high while workers come in to take advantage of the local spike in construction. If that time comes let鈥檚 not forget two things.
First, local unemployment is already high while employers - right now - in 亚洲天堂 Lake and in the region can鈥檛 find qualified workers. A work camp just highlights an intransigent situation, it doesn鈥檛 create it.
Second, construction work is mobile. You can鈥檛 blame a workforce for doing what it has always done, and what it has to do.
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