Yet another story about New Brunswickers moving west:
Alberta Bound
Job boom drives up provincial population at five times the national average
Bill Mah, The Edmonton JournalPublished: Wednesday, March 29, 2006
EDMONTON – An airport shuttle van pulls up, dumps six suitcases and two middle-aged women on a sunny street outside a hostel in Old Strathcona.
The women have travelled 10 hours from Grande-Anse, N.B., where they couldn’t find work, to the capital of a province where jobs outnumber workers. They are nervous, tired and excited.
“My heart is going pop-pop-pop-pop,” said Claudette Comeau.
Her travelling companion Claudia Duclos said they left desperate times back home for the promise of well-paying jobs. “No salary, no work,” she said of her hometown. “We came here before we lost everything.”
Chris Bruce, a labour economist at the University of Calgary, said the shift of people to booming Alberta from weaker areas is good for the workers, Alberta businesses that are crying for help and even the regions that are losing people.
“In some of the Maritime provinces, there’s a glut of workers, so even the employers are not going to miss them,” Bruce said.
I think Mr. Bruce (hopefully no relation to our own Alec Bruce) may be right about employers not missing them but their families will. Their friends will. Their communities will. I think Mr. Bruce is a bit of a callous jerk for stating it in this way.
But that’s just me.