Photo courtesy @SaskMiiningAssoc, Twitter
The theme of Mining Week got a tongue-in-cheek edit from the Saskatchewan Mining Association’s president during a Prince Albert Chamber of Commerce speech on Thursday.
The theme is “Mining – a pillar of Saskatchewan’s Economy.” The Association’s Pam Schwann adds that it’s “still” a pillar of the economy, despite a provincial budget that predicts some major cutbacks related to a struggling resource sector.
“We’re still going to see people being employed by the mining sector, we’re still going to see the sector as an employment source of revenue increase in new growth that we had been seeing for quite a few years,” she said.
The mining sector is still a source of nearly 30,000 jobs across Saskatchewan, Schwann said.
She laments the recent loss of 500 jobs at Cameco’s Rabbit Lake mine due to slumping uranium prices, especially since “right now there’s not a lot of jobs in other sectors to go to.”
The Rabbit Lake closure, along with a provincial budget that expects $968 million less in non-renewable resource revenue than last year’s budget, come after Saskatchewan had a solid eight years of huge investments in mining.
Those investments are now largely at a standstill, Schwann said.
“You’re not seeing the same level of investment and it’s pared back quite a bit so that’s what we’re seeing right now and we’re also seeing an even more of a reduction because of the low commodity prices that haven’t supported the expanded capacity,” she said.
Despite the current struggles, Schwann said we need to keep developing, because the high-paying jobs that mining offers contribute to a strong economy.
“We don’t want to move to where the only jobs available are a service economy because those are not high-paying jobs. We need jobs that are involve in wealth creation, which are your engineers, your tradespeople,” she said.
Some current mining sector projects underway include the Jansen BHP Billiton potash project and diamond exploration in the Athabasca Basin by DeBeers.
During her presentation, one audience member pointed out that recently-trained millwrights are having a tough time finding work in Saskatchewan, and Schwann responded that it’s important to have skills training that matches up with jobs currently in demand.