Edmonton Economic Development Corp. (EEDC) and the City of Edmonton — together with 18 other regional stakeholders — have launched a targeted marketing campaign to 300,000-plus students at seven post-secondary schools in Toronto. The Succeed Sooner campaign created by DDB Canada (Edmonton) will generate an estimated 11 million advertising impressions from March 3rd to April 4th to promote the many opportunities and advantages of a career in Edmonton.
Toronto post-secondary students are being asked to visit the campaign’s anchor website — www.succeedsooner.ca — for information on Edmonton jobs, housing and quality-of-life. The campaign website is linked to www.edmonton.com/jobs where a customized version of wowjobs.ca provides job seekers simple and direct access to all posted jobs in Greater Edmonton. (The website wowjobs.ca is an Edmonton-based search engine that automatically collects and sorts jobs from the websites of all linked employers into one, easily searchable location.)
In theory, I don’t have a problem with government money being used to try and recruit Ontario students to jobs in Alberta. But eventually this becomes zero-sum game. All four western Canadian provinces are trying to recruit people from eastern provinces. Ontario is trying to recruit (at least specialized workers) from other Canadian provinces. The money is escalating. In the end, nationally, we need to have more workers. Shuffling people around Canada leaving shortages isn’t the solution.