NWT/NUNAVUT
Despite an increase in overall diamond mine employment in the Northwest Territories, the proportion of southern-based workers has now passed 50 per cent.

Cementation mechanic Rodney Gray repairs a bolter rig about 358 metres underground at the Diavik diamond mine. A new survey shows that although mining employment is up, most of that gain has been among non-NWT residents. - photo courtesy Diavik Diamond Mines Inc.

A new survey of mining employees in the territory shows that 54 percent of workers live outside the NWT. The last time this survey was completed in 2009, a little more than 58 per cent of respondents lived in the NWT.

Since then, the number of non-NWT mine employees has doubled, compared to an increase of 20 per cent in NWT-based workers.

The survey found the proportion of female and aboriginal employment is higher among those living in the NWT. Northern workers tend to be younger than their southern counterparts and less educated.

Most respondents living outside the territory blamed the cost living to explain why they did not move to the North.

Though Northern mining companies put priority on hiring Northerners and relocating people to the North, the government needs to offer the right incentives to help, said Tom Hoefer, executive director of the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines.

Training a tradesperson takes at least four years and the two weeks on, two weeks off work schedule allows many employees to be based in the south.

"Some Northern aboriginal people have now also moved south, further away from families but where it's cheaper, and then can perhaps experience the world," said Hoefer.

All of this wasn't an issue in the old days of mining towns, he explained, but it's become economical for companies to fly people in and out of their workplaces instead of housing them locally. That trend started in the 1980s.

"Now we have greater mobility in Canada but some of the benefits fly away," said Hoefer.

The chamber's Measuring Success 2014 document outlines three ways to increase Northern employment: attract southerners to move North, keep Northern workers in the North and replace southern workers with Northern workers.

Cost of living is the prime factor in the first two of those.

"Twenty-five years ago, people wanted to come up North because you could make good coin here," said Hoefer.

"We've lost that same attractiveness over the years."

He said wages up North don't always out-compete oil sands or mining jobs down south anymore.

But another part of that is because of the lack of increase in the Northern residents income tax deduction.

"They haven't adjusted it for cost of living or anything in probably a dozen years," said Hoefer, adding that each person brings the territory an additional $30,000 in federal transfer payments.

"How do you sweeten the pot? Can you share some of that back with people?"

He even likes the idea of something akin to a "baby bonus" in the North, by which the government would essentially pay people to have children and boost the population.

Replacing southern workers with Northern ones requires significant education and training.

"Government can help on all of these fronts," said Hoefer.

"An important thing they could do is to start to teach kids at an early age about mining and resource development, and encourage them to stay in school and then become geologists, engineers, apprentices."

There are no silver bullets, he said.

"This will take time, but we cannot let up. All parties need to keep their efforts focused on these issues."