Construction labour shortage weighs on Alberta businesses as growth accelerates

Alberta’s population boom is increasing pressure on the construction sector to build the infrastructure to accommodate growth and business owners say they’re already feeling the labour crunch. 

A shortfall of workers in skilled trades is an issue across Canada, but with Alberta adding more than 200,000 new residents last year, the industry needs to find a way to keep up with more road and bridge repairs, new housing development and major infrastructure work.

“It’s literally the No. 1 issue on everyone’s mind,” said Independent Contractors and Businesses Association Alberta president Mike Martens.

“From the sewage lines underneath the water treatment plants to the roads, bridges, hospitals — all these things that really create the amazing life we have in North America is old infrastructure,” he said.

“We’ve taken it for granted, and now it’s needing fixing, and we don’t have the people available to fix it.”

Industry group BuildForce Canada forecasts Alberta will need to replace almost a quarter of its 2023 labour force within a decade.

While the province’s younger population relative to some other parts of Canada should help make it easier to close the gap, factoring in growth means there could still be a shortfall of 22,000 workers by 2033.

Statistics Canada data shows Alberta’s construction job vacancy rate jumped to 6.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2023. In comparison, in the five years leading up to the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020, the province’s construction job vacancy rates never exceeded 3.5 per cent.

Gary Zeitner is senior vice president of Edmonton-based civil construction firm Abalone Group of Companies. (Madeline Smith/CBC)

Gary Zeitner is senior vice president at Abalone Group of Companies, a civil construction firm. The company employs heavy equipment operators that do the excavation and grading work to prepare for the next stage of construction — it’s the bedrock of virtually any infrastructure project, whether that’s a new residential subdivision or an industrial project.

“We do not bid on all of the opportunities that are out there, and the reason is entirely about our labour force,” Zeitner said.

“We have an asset base of equipment that would allow us to do much more work than we’ve done in the last five years, but we simply can’t get the labour force that would be able to make use of all of that equipment.”

Operating the excavators and other equipment involved in the

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There isn’t enough business to justify rail line across Cape Breton, study finds

An engineer who helped author a 2023 study into the viability of a rail line across Cape Breton says there aren’t enough businesses on the island that need to ship by train to justify fixing up the crumbling rail bed, bridges and tracks.

Dan MacDonald, of DMDE Engineering, said officials wanted to do a study to demonstrate the need for a functioning rail line without a container terminal project.

To do that, the rail company has said it needs to run at least 10,000 rail cars across Cape Breton Island every year.

At a public meeting in Sydney on Monday night hosted by the Scotia Rail Development Society on Monday evening, MacDonald said the study found existing companies could use just under 3,000 cars and a statistical analysis of trucking in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador found there could be demand for another 3,000 to 6,000 rail cars.

“We’re close,” he said. “We got to 9,300, and I think we’re only one big carrier or one big user of the railway to put that over the top and to develop the economic plan that would make it viable.”

MacDonald said later in an interview the study officially found a range of 6,000 to 9,000 cars annually was possible.

“We think that once we have the rail here, you build it and they will come, that you’ll get closer to the [9,300],” he said.

“I guess the 93 is a bit optimistic, but it’s in the range and that’s the number we’ve been quoting.”

‘We have to tell people what a great port we have’

MacDonald also said officials believe if they can find one more large rail user, they would have the numbers to convince the railway company that a line in Cape Breton would be viable.

He said they are looking out west to Saskatchewan to find a large shipper willing to use a new East Coast port.

“The Cape Breton Partnership has put in an application to Nova Scotia’s Department of Economics to get funding to try and develop this business case, to see about potash, to see about canola, to see about grain,” he said.

“This is just ideas we have here, and we need to market our port and our railway here. We have to tell people what a great port we have.”

The Cape Breton Partnership is an economic development agency based in Sydney,

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Passengers Stuck for Hours in Long Lines Amid Passport Control Meltdown

Border control at many of the UK’s biggest airports was disrupted for multiple hours on Tuesday evening after electronic passport gates suffered a nationwide outage.

Thousands of passengers landed at London Gatwick — Europe’s eighth busiest airport — late on Tuesday to face massive delays in entering the country.

This reporter was among those to face the huge lines, spending almost two hours queuing to get through passport control — longer than the flight from France I’d taken.

Similar issues were reported at major airports nationwide, including hubs like Europe’s busiest airport, London Heathrow, as well as Manchester, Birmingham, and Edinburgh.

“Only the manual desks are being manned and it’s going to take a while to get through,” one airport staff member shouted to passengers who had just disembarked a flight only to see crowds filling the hallways.

“All airports in the UK are impacted,” she added.


Gatwick Airport queues

Polly Thompson



The crowd was left waiting in the increasingly hot corridor, slowly edging forwards with no idea how long the delay would last. Many made calls to relatives, telling them not to wait up.

There was mostly no access to toilets or water, and buggies carrying disabled and elderly passengers could not pass through the crowds.

“It’s absolute chaos. They’re telling us nothing,” complained one passenger, who had just flown back from holiday in Benidorm, Spain, with his family.

A group of upbeat young men cracked jokes, drawing a few laughs from tired passengers.

“Oh… and it’s another long corridor boys,” they joked as the crowd slowly moved around yet another corner in the airport. “Every ten feet we have to cheer.”

“Let’s light a cigarette and set off the fire alarm. That would get us all out of here quickly,” said another.

As the temperature in the packed hallways began to rise, others became more frustrated.

“We have no idea what is happening. These are crazy queues in Gatwick airport,” Gedi, a Lithuanian national returning to his home in the UK, told BI. “I’m feeling very sweaty and very hot.”

After around 50 minutes, BI’s reporter entered the main border control hall, where more staff were on hand, trying their best to calm the crowds and handing out bottles of water.

“It’s a national outage of the e-gates,” one airport official confirmed to BI. “The Home Office will know more, but it’s across all the airports nationwide. It’s unplanned.”

A massive

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AstraZeneca withdraws Covid-19 vaccine, citing low demand


London
CNN
 — 

AstraZeneca is withdrawing its highly successful coronavirus vaccine, citing the availability of a plethora of new shots that has led to a decline in demand.

The vaccine — called Vaxzevria and developed in partnership with the University of Oxford — has been one of the main Covid-19 vaccines worldwide, with more than 3 billion doses supplied since the first was administered in the United Kingdom on January 4, 2021.

But the vaccine has not generated revenue for AstraZeneca since April 2023, the company said. It has not been used in the United Kingdom for some time.

“As multiple, variant Covid-19 vaccines have … been developed, there is a surplus of available updated vaccines. This has led to a decline in demand for Vaxzevria, which is no longer being manufactured or supplied,” it said in a statement shared with CNN Wednesday.

“AstraZeneca has therefore taken the decision to initiate withdrawal of the marketing authorizations for Vaxzevria within Europe,” it added.

In a notice on its website, the European Medicines Agency also announced the withdrawal, which means that Vaxzevria is no longer authorized to be marketed or sold in European Union countries.

AstraZeneca said it would work with regulators in other countries to “align on a clear path forward,” including withdrawing marketing authorizations for the vaccine where no future commercial demand is expected.

“We are incredibly proud of the role Vaxzevria played… Our efforts have been recognized by governments around the world and are widely regarded as being a critical component of ending the global pandemic,” AstraZeneca said.

Dr Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton in England, said the likely key reason for the withdrawal was the fact that other Covid vaccines, including the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, were “essentially better products.”

The newer mRNA vaccines use genetic material to instruct cells to make the coronavirus spike protein, which in turn causes the body to create antibodies to combat an actual Covid infection. AstraZeneca’s Covid shot uses a cold virus common to chimpanzees as a viral vector to carry the spike protein from the coronavirus into cells.

“AstraZeneca is very good, but the mRNA products… are better,” Head said. “They have higher effectiveness and the mRNA platforms are more easily adapted towards the latest Covid variants. Thus, they form a key part of most countries’ longer-term strategies.”

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Pinky Cole Says This Is The Secret Sauce To Running A Business

Running a business is far from easy. From coming up with an initial concept to acquiring investors, being an entrepreneur is serious work. There are thousands of entrepreneurs in the United States, but some especially stand out. For example, Slutty Vegan founder Pinky Cole has made her mark in the vegan space. The Black female vegan entrepreneur started Slutty Vegan in 2018. Six years later the fast-food vegan chain has fourteen brick and mortar locations. But Cole isn’t stopping there. She is a big believer in mentoring and investing in Black vegan entrepreneurs like Angela Simmons, who started a vegan funnel cake company called Angela’s Cakes. Simmons was inspired to start Angela’s Cakes when Cole initially came up with the idea. Now Angela’s Cakes is operated as a partner through Pinky Cole and Slutty Vegan.

Simmons only had kind words to say about her mentor and business partner Pinky Cole. “Pinky and I had a relationship prior and then we talked. Pinky was the part of the brainchild behind Angela’s Cakes. I talked to her and she had an idea. We collaborated and came up with Angela’s cakes. It’s really important to be behind one another when it comes to the different ideas we have. I’m a really big believer in collaboration,” she told me.

“It’s always great to get advice from someone who’s done it before. I’m really big on getting advice from people who have done it successfully, who have great input. Pinky is a mentor. This is what she does in the food world. This is my first go at being in the food space. Even though I love it, it’s much different when you’re actually in it from a business perspective. Make sure you have a mentor in that space, and, if not, look for one,” she said. And Cole is one of Simmons’ biggest champions. I spoke with Slutty Vegan founder Pinky Cole about what she believes is the secret sauce to running a successful business.

Emphasize Marketing and Branding

Cole isn’t in the food industry for the money, although according to her, Slutty Vegan is valued at nearly one hundred million dollars. She believes that marketing is the voice of a business– and she isn’t wrong. The Atlanta based entrepreneur has plenty of solid advice for up and coming entrepreneurs, especially those

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