The 400 miners needed to run De Beers Canada's $982-million Victor diamond mine in northern Ontario will likely stretch the industry's capacity to supply skilled workers.
Construction of the mine is scheduled to start next year with production beginning in 2008.
The Mining Industry Training and Adjustment Council (MITAC) reported last month that Canada's mining sector faces "a serious skills shortage in the next decade."
The report found the mining industry could lose up to 40 per cent of the existing workforce by 2010. "More than half of its current work force is eligible to retire in the next 10 years, taking with them an average of 21 years of mining sector experience each," the report said. It estimated that as many as 81,000 new workers will be required.
Chris Hodgson, president of the Ontario Mining Association says the looming shortage of skilled workers is serious. About 40 per cent of Canada's skilled miners live in Ontario.
"There is a increase in the number of skilled miners who are retiring, at the same time the demand for commodities is increasing," he says. "We've not faced this problem before."
Until the late 1990s, skilled miners were being laid off in places such as Sudbury. New mining technology required fewer workers and the demand for commodities was not increasing. "The industry went from boom to bust," Hodgson says.
The number of people wanting to be miners continues to drop, a trend that Hodgson says needs to be reversed. "Today, mining is a modern safe industry with great financial security. People need to hear this message."
To increase the pool of skilled miners, the Ontario Mining Association is focusing on Canadian youth, women, Aboriginal people, visible minorities and immigrants, Hodgson says.
"More women are needed in mining," he says. MITAC found that only 13 per cent of all employees in the mining industry were women, compared to nearly 47 per cent of the Canadian workforce.
The association believes Canada's immigration policy does not encourage people with mining skills to immigrate.
"The selection criteria may be contributing to the mining industry's labour shortage by turning away workers in the trades and semi-skilled occupations at the border," the report says.
Ron Price, mine manager for Eagle River Mine, says the government and large mining companies must do more to increase the number of skilled miners to maintain Ontario's competitiveness. "We face an acute skilled labour shortage."
Eagle River Mine is a gold mine about 50 kilometres west of Wawa. It is owned by River Gold Mines Ltd. of Toronto.
Price says the shortage of skilled miners will become more severe as the demand for commodities increases. "We'll lose customers because we can't supply them."
River Gold Mines invested more than $250,000 in training equipment and staff to train unemployed and under-employed workers at its remote mining site to work in the mine. "Of the 12 people trained, only one remains. The others went to larger mining companies closer to their home. The big companies weren't training enough people," Price says "We lost a lot of money. We are no longer running this program. We're now getting skilled miners by offering financial incentives," he says.
