THUNDER BAY — While Ontario continues to struggle with where to relocate skilled immigrant workers, the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce is asking the province to allocate seats for workers specifically in Northern Ontario as many have been settling within the Greater Toronto Area primarily.
Finding skilled workers is a real challenge, said Charla Robinson, president of the Chamber of Commerce.
"The province has the opportunity to decide on a certain number of immigrants each year and how they are accepted. We want them to use that stream to apply 3,000 seats to be specifically set aside for northern Ontario because we are having a real challenge with skills shortages.
"We know that the whole province is facing that, but here in Northern Ontario it's especially challenging."
Robinson said if the province would make this allocation, it would help bridge a population gap that continues to grow.
"Up until 2041, based on the way our population is right now, we need to bring in 100,000 people to Northern Ontario. If we had 3,000 spots for sure every year for the next 20 years, that would certainly help to fill the gap, but it's still a pretty big gap.
"But we need to start making changes, having governments to look at these programs to help to address things, and this is [needed for] the provincial program."
As Northern Ontario's population begins to age and retire from the workforce, there are not a lot of people ready to back-fill the opening positions.
Robinson said this is an "all hands on deck" approach.
"So this started as a chamber initiative with five northern chambers and we had it adopted as policy at the Ontario Chamber. Now we've reached out to the Municipal Association through the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities and the Northern Ontario Municipal Association.
"They have distributed it to all municipalities in Northern Ontario to ask them to adopt council resolutions and talk to government about it as well.
"We're also reaching out to large employers, colleges, universities, economic development agencies all across Northern Ontario to say everybody 'We need to all add our voices to this,' to push the government to give us this set-aside."
The chamber submitted a letter to David Piccini, Ontario's minister of labour, immigration, training and skills development.
