A lack of engineers and other skilled professionals is driving up the cost of developing resource-based projects in northern B.C. Janine North has put out a challenge to B.C. universities to address the problem.
The Northern Development Initiative Trust CEO says universities should focus their efforts on informing graduating students about the work opportunities available in northern B.C., rather than keeping them in the Lower Mainland.
Thompson Creek Minerals, developers of the Mount Milligan gold and copper mine, 145 km northwest of Prince George, estimate skills shortages in the design phase will add between $100 million and $200 million to the $1.3 billion construction cost. North believes universities can have a stake in filling that labour need.
"Fewer than 100 graduates from universities outside UNBC have launched their careers in central and northern B.C. each year," said North, speaking Wednesday to a UNBC audience that included six B.C. university presidents.
"We've done a great job of graduating young people who are city-smart, but not resource-smart. It amazes me how little young people know about the science and technology of forestry, wood-product manufacturing, natural gas extraction, transportation or mining."
Rural B.C. communities have accounted for 70 per cent of the province's export wealth for the past decade, yet all of those smaller markets are suffering skills shortages. North thinks one solution would be to start producing locally-trained engineers.
"Many of us in the north would love to see civil, mechanical and electrical engineering offered in a northern setting, whether it's in partnership with UNBC or another university, it's something we've been asking for and companies need," North said. "It's difficult to attract graduates to the north when there are engineering jobs going unfilled even in urban areas in southern British Columbia."
Building on partnerships with UBC in physiotherapy and environmental engineering, UNBC president George Iwama has been discussing plans for an engineering graduate program in collaboration with another university to start within two years or less.
"Ideally the engineering program would be resource-based and we've been talking with industry about integrating with the mills here to have a fully-integrated learning experience connected to the resource industries," said Iwama.
UBC president Stephen Toope says it's all a matter of changing the attitudes of students to convince them of the merits of working and living in the north. The key, he says, is exposing them to northern lifestyles and he likes North's suggestion for universities to create northern B.C.-based work experience programs and internships.
"If you grow up in West Point Gray and went to UBC, anything north of North Vancouver seems far away and we have to change that dynamic and give kids more opportunities to see and feel what's really out there," Toope said.
Twenty per cent of Simon Fraser University's students are from outside of the country and SFU president Andrew Petter says there should be more programs to help sell those foreign students on work opportunities in the north.
"We can do more to draw attention to the fact that a lot of the jobs that are opening and will be available in the future are not going to be necessarily in the Lower Mainland," said Petter. "They will be in Prince George, Vanderhoof and Fort St. John. If we don't invest in education and the skills and training we need, we're going to lose economic opportunities all over the place."
