Saskatchewan Government: British Columbia Construction Association

Saskatchewan Dept: Like the Alberta-B.C. delegation, the Saskatchewan group, which includes 27 employers, has a big presence at the Working Abroad job fair in Dublin this weekend, giving Canadian exhibitors close to 40 per cent of the booths. The Saskatchewan government has set up a website that greets potential Irish emigrants with the message Welcome to your future and hundreds of job postings. The province is even sending immigration officials to help applicants speed the process of moving to Saskatchewan, while Mr. Wall will greet job seekers on Saturday, according to Globe and Mail. Among the exhibitors is Kevin Dahl, co-owner of Nipawin, Sask.-based KaR Contracting, which builds giant metal storage bins attached to grain elevators across the Prairie provinces and has had trouble holding on to employees. This past year we needed 15 to 20 and couldn t get any more than 12, he said. We d hire a bunch of guys and they d just disappear. There s so much work in Saskatchewan that if you have a bad day, you can start 10 other jobs tomorrow. He s hoping to hire up to 10 metal workers this weekend. We have a construction boom; they have a bust, said Abigail Fulton, vice-president of the British Columbia Construction Association, whose 11-member delegation is meeting with Irish government, industry and union representatives in Dublin this week. The meetings, she said, are intended to lay groundwork and develop an inventory of people who are looking for work then match the names to companies looking to fill more than 100,000 construction jobs expected to open up in B.C. and Alberta in the next five years. They re pushing it really hard, said Chris Willis, a Canadian immigration consultant based in Hudson Heights, Que., who has attended the twice-annual job fair for the past six years. This time it s very much a Canadian-focused show. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.