FORT FRANCES — The business community in Fort Frances hopes foreign workers will pick up some of the slack created by its dwindling youth workforce.
Heather Johnson, Fort Frances Chamber of Commerce’s director, said there was a time when university and college students would fill job openings during the summer months, while in recent years high school students have assumed most of the local summer labour.
“They just don’t have the college and university students coming back during the summer,” she said. “It become a real issue for some businesses to keep everybody employed and business running.”
Mayor Andrew Hallikas told the Fort Frances Times he recently met with Marcus Powlowski, Liberal MP for Thunder Bay-Rainy River, to discuss how to bring more workers from outside Canada into the region.
“(Powlowski) is working on the foreign workers file and requested me to write a letter to him asking him for assistance with finding these workers a pathway to permanent residency,” Hallikas told council during its June 23 meeting.
“In particular, he wanted me to include in the letter an economic argument as to how these workers benefit the economy of Fort Frances and how the economy would be negatively affected if we were to lose them.”
The capacity to attract foreign workers to Fort Frances and the whole Rainy River District is crucial for businesses to thrive.
“Since the government has brought in these programs, they’re worked very well for a number of our businesses that need help and workers,” Johnson said.
Indeed, many Ontario communities have lost younger people to universities and colleges and careers in larger urban centres, he said.
“We need the worker here to grow and to keep up businesses for people who still live in western Ontario,” Johnson said. “It’s very important.”
Outmigration of the young has bruised workforces in many rural communities across the county, including in Fort Frances where many people are at retirement age or are semi-retired.
While some of those people may have taken a part-time job, Johnson said “we often need more workers to keep businesses afloat and provide good customer service to everybody.”
The local chamber has been working with the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce to lobby for a bigger share of the foreign workers allowed to be hired in Ontario as a whole.
“It’s very important that we get people to come up to northwestern Ontario as well,” she said. “We’re a little bit farther from the big city and so it’s a little bit harder to attract the foreign workers.”
One of the ways to entice workers from outside the area is to promote the recreational attributes the region has to offer.
“If we can get them here, they’ll love it,” Johnson said.
Fort Frances Times / Local Journalism Initiative
