Who created the Chinese foreign miners’ mess?

(Gabriel Yiu) During the month of October, the top front-page story of our major newspapers reported that 2000 Chinese miners would soon arrive as foreign temporary workers to work at a northern coal mine. The national news sparked the concerns of British Columbians. The labour unions filed a petition with the court to block the Chinese foreign workers from taking over local workers’ jobs. The media and court documents revealed that the mining company listed Mandarin-speaking as a recruitment condition, but the mining company denied it and threatened to withdraw their investment…

The mining project at Murray River is in a mess. If we look beyond the surface and examine this matter at a deeper level, we will see that the affair shows that an incompetent provincial government failed to look after the interests of British Columbians.

In 2007, the China-backed Canadian Dehua International Mines Group Inc. told the BC Liberal government that they “will require approximately 400 employees with specific skills in underground coal mining.” In 2008, the BC government spent $1.3M on a mining labour force study that recommends a new trade workers’ category to receive training called “underground mine worker.” The Liberal government has failed to act on that recommendation.

In November 2011, the notes of a meeting in Beijing between the premier and HD Mining International show that the premier and staff were aware that the company intended to fill over half of the workforce for their Murray River Mine Project with their own workers. Yet, our premier did not make an effort to ensure the project’s jobs go to British Columbians.

Last week, the federal court released a plan of the mining company. The document states that the company plans to use temporary foreign workers for 30 months to build the mine. Then, if the mine is approved, the foreign workers would operate the mine for another two years. After that, the company plans to train local Canadian workers and recruit local workers at the rate of 10% a year. Thus, it would take 10 years, or 14.5 years from the building of the mine, to have the entire operation run by Canadian labour.

I find the HD plan puzzling. The controversy of this matter has been represented as over the question whether Canada has or has not enough skilled underground mining workers. Nevertheless, the work of the early stages in exploration and building the mine site involves work on the surface, not deep underground. It’s amazing that the mining company can’t find Canadian workers able to do the work overground. I find it incredible that for the first four and a half years, the company has to rely entirely on Chinese temporary workers to build and operate the mine.

The intriguing part is, when the mining company’s stewards met with Premier Christy Clark a year ago, they requested bringing in foreign workers to fill more than half the workforce to operate the mine. When our premier seemed not to care about it, the company now wants to operate the mine entirely with foreign temporary workers.

When foreigners invest in China, the Chinese government would require the use of local workers.

Yet, our government has not done its job in this coal mine project; they failed to train local skill workers and they haven’t looked after Canadian workers’ employment opportunities.

As a result of our incompetent provincial government, an uproar has been created in our community. After a great many of our manufacturing and call-centre jobs have been moved to Asia, people worry that high-paying resources jobs would also be taken away from local workers.

If the BC government has accepted the recommendation of their mining labour force study and started training underground mining workers years ago, or if our premier would press for more local workers being hired for the mine project when she met with the executives of the company, we wouldn't have to face this mess now.

Even if the company could operate according to their plan, since there’re significant differences in the mining industries, environment and labour standards and regulations between China and Canada, plus the language barrier, a mine which is wholly operated by foreign temporary workers from China will meet lots of challenges on a bumpy road ahead.