Lack of workers may stunt job growth in Timmins.

Even if the City of Timmins manages to create 1,000 jobs in the next few years, participants in a recent summit on Timmins' economic future identified that one of the most significant challenges may be to find workers to fill the positions.

The Timmins Summit 2004 on April 2 was a day of discussion and strategizing about ways to try and bring 1,000 new jobs to Timmins in the next few years.

David Hall, general manager of Canadian operations for talc mining company Luzenac Inc., was one of the private-sector individuals participating in the summit.

He says the region is doing well for skilled labour to fill the jobs that are there now, but there are few skilled people to fill future positions.

"What we don't have is any excess to take up the slack," he says. "When we get a major exploration program or mine development, we need quite a substantial number of skilled people for that project and those people just don't exist."

What is lacking is a knowledge base in the development of new products or developing new markets for the products already produced, he says.

"The universities have professors on staff with particular focuses. Certainly, Laurentian has a strong mining influence," he says. "As far as we're aware, though, there is not as much focus on downstream, manufactured products. We tend to mine the material and get it to a commodity state, then ship it out to a commodity market. For those who take that product and manufacture it into value-added products, there is a lot of value in that process."

By ANDREW WAREING

Northern Ontario Business