Suncor Energy Foundation has made its largest ever single investment with a donation to the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology's (NAIT) newly unveiled Building on Demand campaign.

The $3-million donation is also the largest cash gift the technical college has ever received.

The campaign's goal is to raise $50 million for the construction of 11 centres around the province to boost the training of skilled apprentices and business students. With this latest infusion, the campaign kitty now sits at $13.5 million.

The record Suncor donation will be used to create the NAIT Suncor Energy Centre for Piping Technologies. It will also support 10 scholarships each year for five years for students participating in this training. The scholarships will focus on Aboriginal, immigrant, and female students - demographic groups currently under-represented in Alberta's trades workforce.

Spartan Controls and Wiaward Steel have also donated to the program.

In a separate announcement, the Province of Alberta says it will increase immigration and bolster apprentice training to deal with a projected shortfall of more than 100,000 workers over the next decade.

With $107 billion in capital projects on the drawing board, political and industry leaders say they want to ensure that the province's red-hot economy continues to roar.

The government plan includes a policy to seek immigrants and help them make the transition to live and work in the province, Economic Development Minister Clint Dunford said.

"Expanding our provincial nominee program will help Alberta employers attract and recruit skilled foreign workers to fill positions that could not be filled across Canada after extensive searching,'' Dunford said.

While the Alberta government doesn't actively recruit tradesworkers from other provinces, Alberta-based employers routinely advertise for employees across Canada.

The goal is to increase the number of permanent immigrants to at least 24,000 a year from about 16,000.

The plan includes marketing Alberta abroad as a place to live, encouraging foreign students to stay after they graduate, improving settlement services and expanding access to English as a second language training.

The province also wants to speed up the rate at which the professional skills of immigrants are recognized to ensure newcomers who are welders or carpenters don't end up driving cabs.

While the labour shortage is most acute in Alberta because of its booming energy sector, including oilsands projects in the Fort McMurray area, other provinces are feeling the pinch for skilled and unskilled workers.

Business groups such as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce have been calling on the federal government to devise a national plan to deal with the problem.

Federal Immigration Minister Joe Volpe has suggested Ottawa may raise Canada's immigration levels by up to 40 per cent over the next five years.

Earlier this year trade unions opposed a government program that brought in temporary foreign workers to help in Alberta's oilsands.

Labour leaders were still a little skeptical.

"Is this really about immigrants or helping business get better access to cheap labour?'' questioned Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

"We are not convinced the provincial government has done enough to help groups of workers here in Alberta who could be trained to fill some of these trades jobs.'' McGowan said earlier this year the province refused to help retrain 350 workers who lost jobs when Celanese Canada (NYSE:CE) closed its plant in Fort Saskatchewan.

"There are also pools and pockets of unemployed in Aboriginal communities. Where is the government announcement aimed at them?'' Alberta's jobless rate is about 3.5 per cent, a number the government considers to be near to full employment.

The province draws about seven per cent of Canada's immigrants, a number it hopes to increase to 10 per cent.

Advanced Education Minister Dave Hancock said Alberta, a province built largely by newcomers during its first 100 years, must depend on a wave of immigrants for its future.

"We again need that stream of immigrant people who are prepared to come here to live in a place that has a good quality of life, but where they will have opportunities for themselves and their families.'' Last year about 65 per cent of immigrants who moved to Alberta had a university degree, a non-university diploma or a trade certificate.

Over the last three years most newcomers were from China, the Philippines, India and Pakistan.

- with files from Business Edge