30 years …. 40 years ….. 14 years … 10 years… Canadians … Chinese ….. Malaysions ….

So maybe they are not even sure whether it will be a coal mine or a gold mine or a bat cave ……..

What the heck … just give us the permit and there might be a nice Jag in your driveway …..

;-)

I just wonder how this would play out if we (BC) owned a mine in China and we choose to hire only English speaking Canadians. I can tell you the communist party would go ape. There would be no way we could even own a mine in China let alone staff it with non Chinese staffing. So why are we having this debate with these clowns?

Tell them simply once and for all, they need a Canadian English speaking workforce to work in a BC mine, end of story, gotta a problem with that? Pack your crap and get out of the country. By the way you are locked out of the mine site effective at midnight, sincerely the ministry of labor.

Kuddos to the Federation of Labour,the Union of Operation Engineers, Local 15, and the Construction and Specialized Workers Union Local 1611 and others for bringing this forward. People can bellyache all they want about unions but this fight makes the bellyachers look foolish. Only in Canada eh?

Nobody would ever start a mine In china and hire $30 an hour Canadians when they would have 50,000 Chinese willing to work for $5 an hour

“So why are we having this debate with these clowns?”

Because our gov’t and their corporate leaders like it that way.

X2 guesswhat X2!

$5 an hour would be a fortune to some people.

I love watching this story unfold. We should be pulling the mining rights from the HD Mining Company. This is BS.

Never mind pulling the mining rights …..

We need an investigation of the ministry responsible for this. Wonder who is going to be the fall guy for Harper on this one.

I have not kept in touch with the media in other parts of the country … does anyone care about this?

I noticed that HD Mining has a very impressive “fly by night” letterhead … might be a good indicator of the quality of the company.

The Harper Jesters even have the nads to say they are proud of this.

Time to see if the officials have any Cahonees. I doubt they do so, it will go until somebody dies in the mine.

Such a shame.

“I have not kept in touch with the media in other parts of the country … does anyone care about this”

To my utter disbelief, they were talking about this on the local right wing station here in Ottawa a number of weeks back. The general consensus from the hosts and callers was “what the hell is happening in Canada these days where this is allowed to happen”. My jaw almost hit the floor because this is some of the most ideologically right wing radio I’ve ever heard in Canada and it is usually VERY anti-union, pro business, pro Harper, anti Liberal/NDP, etc. Heck, even the right wing financial markets commentator was questioning it along with the governments entire strategy on allowing and promoting Chinese investment in Canada.

So yeah, based on my experience out here, I’d say that virtually everyone who hears the story has the same “are you kidding me?” response. If it’s getting air time on this particular station, you can bet it’s getting air time in the various nooks and crannies of Parliament . . .

Oh and for the record, I only listen to this station for entertainment purposes. It’s like mini Fox News with its own unique cast of characters, LOL ;)

sure, NMG ….. whatever you say … ;-)

Canadian jobs, Canadian wages, Canadian residents
Paycheques that stay in Canada. We can do it!

Word is that some shady immigration “consultants”/lawyers found a loophole in the Labor Market Opinion (LMO) criteria and by “tweaking” the truth managed to slip this one by the bureaucrats at HRSDC.

They almost got away with it, but thankfully they got caught and rightfully so. The LMO if used the way it should would require an extremely extensive labor search throughout every part of Canada, and then only then, would a company or its Lawyers/Consultants be able to apply for foreign skilled workers because there was none in Canada to fill the need.

But you know that there are those (unfortunately) that constantly seek out loophole in government policy at every level of government. Why….because they can make some shady money of course.

Most times they eventually get caught and the loophole is closed as I imagine this one will be. I think though that perhaps some hefty fines are in order for anyone on this side of the pond who took part in this conceived deception.

“Its like a mini Fox News”
I call Sun News tv network Canada’s version of Fox News. Except Sun only has the one hot blonde anchor.

oh say, was there lawyers involved, got to be crooked for sure. and what would happen if the coal market dropped, and it will, we the BC people will be left with a big hole to fill and will have gotten NO money from it. I work up there and I hear there are immigrant future mine workers taking english lessons in Tumbler Ridge right now to meet the qualifications. They already have a dozen or more houses built or being built that are now on hold and causing inconveniencies for the towns people and what will happen when they walk away from that?
Maybe our mayor could go back to China and recrute more industries to pillage our resources. oh that could be a new years trip, 2013 budget. this has to be a very bad joke.

I doubt the sincerity of all concerned on this mine project.

Do we have sufficient, trained, canadian workers to work this mine?. I doubt it.

Are there enough Canadians out of work that we could recruit the number required, and train them for these jobs?. I doubt it.

Would the Union, and others opposed to these temporary Chinese workers, be in favour of using them, if they were paid union scale, and paid union dues? I suspect so.

Is there a serious shortage of skilled labour in Western Canada? You bet.

Would anyone posting on this site take a longwall mining job at this mine, or take the training so that they could take a job? Not bloody likley.

The Conservatives will have everyone in this country working for peanuts one they are done their term in office.

Thr rich getting richer off the backs of all Canadians. That is their goal here.

I would like to know why our Provincial Jobs Minister is not front and center speaking out against foreign workers taking jobs away from the people of BC.

Because it is a federal issue. How often does any provincial minister in any province involve themselves in a federal issue such as this?

So the province says we want the mine to follow the laws of the land. We will not accept foreign workers in this province.

The feds would give him the finger, so to speak.

This was a plan that was in please 3 years ago and most likely the lib new what HD had in mine from the start just diden’t think it would become such a big issue after all its in the far north little town of Tumbler who would care. This is just BS and most likely more to come. A miner in China makes up to $37.00 to 45.00 Canadian a day with a good company no pension no benefits some mines pay way less.Wecome to the new world order

Palopu: the Chinese said there were no qualified miners in Canda for this kind of mining. Funny, there must have been none in China either because even their workers need specialised training for this. So why would they not take experienced Canadian miners and train them? There were 352, by some accounts, who applied for these jobs.
By making Cantonese or Mandarin a prerequisite language, they effectively eliminated them. Canadians who work overseas, don’t necessarily have to speak the foreign language.

And now a miner from china is trying to sue a Canadian union! Kick his ass back to china.

That’s right NoWay! How did this situation get this far? Were the Chinese not discriminating against ALL CANADIANS by eliminating them from the process right off the start! There’s some backroom antics going on here and we are not going to stand for it! If it were not for the unions standing up for jobs all of us would be working for $1 an hour and told it was fair!