There are more than enough tradespeople in Alberta to handle the major oilsands projects scheduled to go ahead, says a group that represents skilled workers in the province.

Mark McCullough, executive director of the Alberta Building Trades Council (ABTC), says a recently leaked memo from Calgary-based oil giant Suncor Inc. shows that the industry doesn't really need to import foreign workers to get the job done.

"There has never been a project in Alberta that the building trades have been on that we couldn't supply the people within Alberta," says McCullough. "On Shell's ($5.7-billion Athabasca Oil Sands Project, completed in 2003) ... we had 15,000 people on its project at peak."

He adds that if a shortfall were to arise among Alberta tradespeople, a nationwide pool of more than 400,000 skilled workers could be tapped through affiliate associations.

The two-page memo, disseminated by the Alberta Liberal Party, addresses the use of foreign workers on Suncor sites.

The Alberta Liberals say the Suncor document admits the real reason for the labour shortage is not a lack of workers but a lack of co-operation between the unionized ABTC and "the convenience union," the Christian Labour Association (CLAC).

"By allowing contractors to bring in foreign trades personnel, especially in the non-union and alternative union sectors, the ABTC perceive a threat to their power base and employability of their members," the memo says. "CLAC hires their own tradeworkers. There are shortages within the CLAC because many ABTC members will not work on a CLAC site, hence the need for foreign workers as a last resort ..."

Suncor spokesman Brad Bellows disputes the political spin being put on the memo, which he says was aimed at discussing future labour issues.

"(The Liberal Party press release) is an interpretation of what was in a Suncor document," Bellows says. "It was to be prepared to discuss foreign labour, but regrettably it went public the way it did. Normally, we're very proud of having a direct proactive approach; we didn't expect our position to be made public in that way."

Suncor, like most oilsands companies, has stated repeatedly it worries that a lack of skilled tradespeople could throw a monkeywrench into billions of dollars worth of megaprojects, such as its $10-billion Voyageur venture and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.'s (CNRL) $10.8-billion Horizon project.

According to ABTC, many tradespeople have been idle in the past year. Among plumbers and pipefitters, for example, in Edmonton alone there are roughly 300 unemployed apprentices, while every Alberta union hall has a waiting list of workers eager to join. But the unions can't guarantee employment for them, McCullough says.

Still, industry continues to harbour concerns of a labour shortage that could affect labour costs, which represent a significant portion of a mega-project's budget.

"It's very much in the interest of the companies, as much as it is for the labour groups, the municipalities ... to see that we manage these things appropriately," Bellows says. Labour costs can be as much of an issue as materials and fabrication costs, he adds.

Suncor has consistently said its policy is to hire locally, beginning with the Fort McMurray region, then Alberta, then the rest of Canada, and finally bringing on foreign labour "only as a last resort after we've exhausted all of our other options," Bellows says.

While Suncor and other oilsands companies such as CNRL say they wish to avoid hiring foreign workers, those same rules don't necessarily extend to the contractors working on the projects.

To that end, Vancouver-based industrial construction company Ledcor Group, a Suncor contractor, reportedly secured approval from the federal government to bring nearly 700 skilled tradespeople from other countries within the next year as temporary workers.

The Alberta Liberals consider certain contractors, especially Ledcor, as the main culprits in the bid to bring in temporary labourers from abroad.

"Most of the contractors I've spoken to think the (current labour) system works and believe that going with the temporary foreign workers is going to be very disruptive to apprenticeship, that it's going to be very disruptive to developing the correct level of labour supply in the province," says Liberal labour critic Dan Backs.

Backs believes worker shortages exist in other areas of the Alberta economy - most notably in health care and residential construction - but says shortfalls in the industrial construction business have been blown out of proportion.

He says the agreement the Alberta government struck with Ottawa last year on importing foreign trades personnel is a bad deal. He is urging the Alberta government to revisit the policy and examine the "real reasons" closely.

For its part, the ABTC says it is not anti-immigration, nor does it contest the use of non-union workers on oilsands construction projects.