Alberta needs 24,000 more workers

CANADA/ENVIRONMENT - Looking for work? According to economists and human resources consulting firm Mercer the Alberta oil patch is going to need another 24,000 skilled workers by 2014.

So much so that the province is focusing on bringing in more foreign workers, completely ignoring Canadian talent that can be found at home. Tar sands and natural gas companies in the region are ratcheting up their programs to recruit temporary foreign workers.

In 2009 and 2010 the tar sands was actually shedding jobs and cutting back during the American Recession and lower oil prices. Now that the economy is in recovery and oil prices are starting to skyrocket again the demand for workers is growing again, like they did during the 2005-2008 period.

So if you're willing to sell your soul to the tar sands companies, there's work to be done. HR firm Mercer admits Alberta could be doing more to recruit and train Canadians who are willing to ignore the environmental catastrophe that is the Alberta oil sands (by environmental standards its 5 times worse than the BP Oil Spill).

In area alone the BP Oil Spill covers 24,000 square km. The Alberta Tar Sands covers an area of 85,000 square km. The difference however is that in Alberta the toxic leftovers from separating oil from tar float downstream and contaminate, fish, wildlife and have causes cancer rates in humans living in the region to skyrocket. There's no known way to clean it all up.

The BP Oil Spill in contrast can be cleaned up and in 3 decades the local wildlife should recover (unless another disaster strikes or the current problem gets worse). Thankfully humans don't drink the Gulf of Mexico water, they only swim in it.