Goin' Down The Road

As a Nova Scotia boy myself who's gone down the road in search of better opportunities in Upper Canada, I know what drives ambitious young folk to pack up and leave home. We don't need a government program--we've had all too many government programs--to convince us to leave town.

Thus Athabasca MP Brian Jean's comments leave me a bit befuddled:

Conservative MP from northern Alberta has been accused of planning to herd Maritimers across the country to help fill the labour shortage in Fort McMurray.

But Athabasca MP Brian Jean calls the accusation is “absolutely offensive.”

He said today he was only trying to encourage Ottawa to provide information and provide transportation to unemployed easterners interested in finding work in other parts of Canada.

“We need not 25,000 people; we need 250,000 people,” Jean told the parliamentary committee on human resources development. “I want them from the rest of Canada. I don’t want them from around the world unless they’re going to be here permanently. .... Quite frankly we need to make some changes — I think some sort of transportation policy to make it available for the people that are unemployed in the rest of Canada should be looked at.”

....

In an interview, Jean said that the Liberals are ashamed that they cancelled a longstanding program that helped people move around the country for jobs.

“We should put forward a communication strategy so that Canadians are aware of what opportunities there are wherever jobs are, whether they be in Hibernia, in the Northwest Territories or southern B.C. for the Pacific Gateway or northern Alberta for the oil sands,” he said.

Everybody back East at least knows somebody who knows somebody who's gone to Fort Mac to rake in the big bucks working in the oil sands. The best communications strategy is the oldest one: word of mouth.

Source: Edmonton Journal