The twin themes of attracting some of British Columbia's highly trained immigrant work force to the Northwest and integrating them into the community, will be the focus of two forums this week.
Discussion sessions have been planned for both Kitimat and Prince Rupert. The first session is planned for Kitimat on the 21st, with Prince Rupert on the calendar for Thursday, August 22nd.
Thursday's Prince Rupert forum is planned for the 5th Street campus of Northwest Community College.
The two Northwest sessions are to be co-chaired by Kitimat's Ron Poole and Herb Pond, the former Mayor of Prince Rupert and currently a community advisor to the BG Group, proponents of LNG development on the North Coast.
The forums are co-ordinated with the Immigrant Employment Council of BC, NWCC, the Kitimat Chamber of Commerce and the Prince Rupert Chamber of Commerce, they have been designed to provide employers with practical information on finding, attracting and integrating New Canadians into the work place and the community.
The goal of the two forums is to provide the groundwork towards a regional strategy to attract skilled immigrant workers to the Northwest,
The Kitimat and Prince Rupert sessions will address a number of issues regarding the topic of immigrant workers, framed in the prism of future development in the region.
Should the number of projects currently being considered for the Northwest reach the development stage and on the scale that many expect, many of those industries will be seeking out workers from out of region to fill a number of positions that will be available.
It's towards integrating that potential workforce into the Northwest communities and developing them and their families into long term residents of the region, that the forum will seek to address. The two days of discussions will be exploring the many issues that could come up, as the industrial expansion of the Northwest takes place.
The forums of the Northwest are following a similar process that took place in Prince George in December of 2012, you can review some of the material assembled from that session from the forum website.
Northwest Community College outlined details on this weeks forums on their website, with a fairly extensive review of the focus of the two forums.
Those that wish to participate will be required to pre-register, you are asked to contact karen.zukas@iecbc.ca you can find out more about that process from this link.
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