[craneSpotter]

Christy Clark vows to fast-track education changes to ensure LNG jobs go to British Columbians

Vancouver Sun, April 3, 2014

VICTORIA — Premier Christy Clark, organized labour and First Nations leaders said Wednesday they will work together to train enough workers to build and operate proposed liquefied natural gas plants in B.C.

A committee, struck up by Clark and labour leaders in September, produced 15 recommendations to tackle apprenticeship, training and other challenges in B.C. nascent LNG sector, said Clark.

Among the highlights is a call to make sure that in LNG trades jobs, a quarter of the jobs are filled by apprentices. It is the first such time a quota has been proposed by the B.C. government.

....“If we don’t get this started now, we will not have the labour available, British Columbians won’t have the skills they need to fill these jobs when they start to become open in huge numbers in one, two, three or four years,” Clark said.

“It has to start now. You can’t start training people in the year those jobs become available. It’s too late.”

The premier has said she needs to plot a course to fill as many as 100,000 jobs building and operating LNG plants.

Of course a special agreement with regard to temporary foreign workers with the feds was also made... BC saw 50,000 temporary foreign workers enter the province in 2012, the last year of available records ... by comparison Saskatchewan saw 5,000...