The StarPhoenix: Saskatchewan, Alberta battle for workers

The following article, which appeared in The StarPhoenix on January 2, includes quotes from Jason Disano, director of the Social Sciences Research Laboratories (SSRL).

Saskatchewan, Alberta battle for workers

By Jeff Davis, The StarPhoenix
January 2, 2013 7:31 AM

For years, Saskatchewan's youth left in droves for Alberta. That all changed in 2007 when the tide turned the other way. Now, the sister provinces are locked in a battle for labour.

While working as a young nurse in the 1980s, Linda Hosegood said her colleagues - like people in other occupations in Saskatchewan - were leaving the province in droves.

"If anyone was living close to the Alberta border you just worked there, because the wages were so much higher," said Hose-good, who lives outside Radisson with her husband, Bill.

"We lost a lot of people," Hosegood said.

Fast-forward to 2013 and it's a different world, Hose-good said, one in which there is so much opportunity on the home front that three of her four grown children are building lives here in the province. Only her son, Brennen, a geologist working in the oil sector, is across the border in Calgary.

"I guess on a whole they have more opportunity to stay closer to home," she said.

"It's good to be on that side of the line, as opposed to where we have been for so many years."

Saskatchewan and Alberta - now the economic heavyweights of Canada - are locked in a knock-'em-down, drag-'em-out battle for much needed workers.

After years of bleeding its best and brightest to other provinces, Saskatchewan is attracting new residents by the thousands each month.

Saskatchewan is the second-fastest growing province in Canada, Statistics Canada demographer Julien Berard-Chagnon said, attracting migrants from Ontario, British Columbia and the Maritimes.

From 1972 to 2007, Alberta was attracting workers from Saskatchewan at a net rate of as many as 10,000 people per year. Saskatchewan finally got the upper hand from 2007 to 2010, when Albertans began coming to the Land of Living Skies for work.

Now the demographic tug-of-war has become a virtual stalemate.

In the third quarter of 2012, 2,941 people moved from Alberta to Saskatchewan, while 2,907 moved from Saskatchewan to Alberta - a net gain of 34 people for Saskatchewan.

"Historically, Alberta was the winner in its exchanges with Saskatchewan," Berard-Chagnon said. "Now it depends on the year."

Of all the Canadians who moved to Saskatchewan in the third quarter of 2012, 41 per cent of those came from Alberta. During the same time, 49 per cent of those who left Saskatchewan went to Alberta.

Premier Brad Wall said he can't help but feel good to be overseeing a period of record growth "the likes of which we haven't seen since 1921."

While rapid growth has its challenges - especially in terms of housing - the premier said he's especially happy to see Saskatchewan's wayward sons and daughters return, and from the province's chief rival in particular.

"It's nice to see as many people come back, especially from Alberta," Wall said.

But people aren't coming home all on their own.

Since 2007, the government has been working overtime to entice wayward Saskatchewanians back, said Rupen Pandya, assistant deputy minister for labour market development at the Ministry of Economy. Advertising campaigns to tempt people back from Alberta launched that year have paid off.

Government officials are trying hard to recruit 75,000 to 90,000 people during the next five years, Pandya said, and while they'll find them wherever they can, the preference is to see former Saskatchewan residents return in force.

"The first focus is on expats, people who are from Saskatchewan and left," he said. "We're working to bring those former Saskatchewan folks back.

"And it's working." Government officials are also attending job fairs across Canada and hoping their tag line - "real growth, real opportunity" - will resonate. They are also reaching out through university alumni associations and organizations such as the Saskatchewan Mining Association.

With a projected annual GDP growth of more than three per cent and a 4.5 per cent unemployment rate, Pandya said, the economy is likely doing more than anything to bring people back.

Alex Miller, 30, returned for that very reason.

Miller left Saskatchewan after graduating from the University of Saskatchewan with an engineering degree in 2004. He caught on with an oil and gas company in Calgary before starting Innovative Residential, a home development company focused on affordable housing.

"I had no choice," Miller said. "I looked for jobs in Saskatchewan and there really wasn't much here. Over three-quarters of our class had to leave."

But Miller, who grew up on a farm outside of Avonlea, said his goal was always to move back when he and his wife, Anna, started a family.

When the economy picked up in 2007, Miller and his business partner took the opportunity to return and Innovative Residential has thrived since, drawing praise from city hall and the chamber of commerce for finding creative ways to build and market affordable housing.

"In Calgary, it was very, very busy. It was a rat race," Miller said. "I liked the busy business mentality, but it was too busy for what I was used to when I grew up on a farm outside of a town of 400 people.

"Here, I really like the Saskatchewan attitude and the small-town feel."

As director of University of Saskatchewan's Social Sciences Research Laboratories, Jason Disano does a lot of thinking about why the province is such a big draw these days, and not just for Canadians.

"A lot of the increase in population is coming from new immigrants," he said. "Saskatchewan is becoming more and more attractive to new immigrants."

Between July and September 2012, 3,734 people migrated to Saskatchewan from beyond Canada's borders, far exceeding the net 1,286 Canadians who came to the province during that time.

Traditionally, immigrants tended to settle in southern Ontario, the Lower Mainland of B.C. or around Montreal, Disano said, but Saskatchewan is becoming a more desirable option now that some immigrant communities - like Filipinos - have laid roots here.

"It's sort of a snowball effect," he said. "Once you've got folks coming in and settling, their friends and family are more likely to come and settle in the area and build a community."

Both immigrants and Canadians alike are feeling hopeful about their future in the province, Disa-no said. He noted the University of Saskatchewan recently conducted a wide-ranging social survey called Taking the Pulse, which found that 86 per cent of people were "optimistic" that young people in the province could find good jobs.

A decade ago in a similar survey, Disano said, 52 per cent said they were optimistic about economic prospects in the province.

"That's a huge, huge jump," he said. "People haven't had this much optimism since people settled the province."

And it's a good thing too, Disano said, given that the province lost a net of 196,300 people between 1971 and 2009, a number that exceeded

the birthrate.

Disano said while the glitz and glamour of Calgary can't be denied, many people are deciding to come back to Saskatchewan to get away from it all.

"Saskatoon is growing, but it's still generally a smaller to midsize city," he said. "And there's a certain appeal to that: It's a quiet place to raise a family."

But wayward Saskatchewanians better not delay, he said, since real estate prices in Saskatoon jumped five per cent last year alone.

"Houses are really, really expensive here and are increasingly becoming out of reach for young families," he said.

Miller admitted Alberta still holds big-city advantages for many of his friends and former colleagues who remain there. And Saskatoon is less affordable than it was when he returned. But there's no place like home, Miller said.

"I'm not sure that I miss much about Calgary at all," he said.

"I love the excitement and the growth and the change that's happening here. That's why it is a really compelling place to live right now."

-With files by David Hutton

SASK., ALBERTA P O P U L AT I O N EXCHANGE

During the last four decades, Alberta has gained population from Saskatchewan in all but seven years. But the trend has turned around.

1972: Saskatchewan lost around 8,500 people to Alberta.

1980: Saskatchewan lost around 4,000 people to Alberta.

1983: Saskatchewan gained around 2,000 people from Alberta.

1990: Saskatchewan lost around 10,000 people to Alberta.

1996: Saskatchewan lost around 2,000 people to Alberta.

2004: Saskatchewan lost around 4,000 people to Alberta.

2007: Saskatchewan gained around 4,000 people from Alberta.

2012 (to date): Saskatchewan and Alberta are equal.
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