The Alberta government is launching a second Alberta is Calling campaign to attract more skilled workers from Ontario and Atlantic Canada even after Ontario Premier Doug Ford told Alberta Premier Danielle Smith he’s not a fan of the advertisements.
The first iteration of the campaign, which ran in summer 2022, targeted skilled labour workers living in Toronto and Vancouver. The second campaign seeks to attract Canadians living in the Maritimes and parts of Ontario, including London, Hamilton, Windsor, and Sudbury.
Alberta Jobs, Economy and Northern Development Minister Brian Jean said Alberta is once again putting out a call for skilled workers to join the province as it creates jobs, attracts investment and diversifies its economy.
“It is the Renewed Alberta Advantage, and I encourage more people to experience it for themselves,” Jean said Monday morning.
In a keynote speech to Alberta Enterprise Group members on March 2, Smith said Ford told her he didn’t like the Alberta is Calling campaign in her first call with him after she was elected.
“I said ‘I betcha don’t, but we’re going to keep doing it because it’s working,’” she told the crowd.
Smith also said the success of Alberta will spill over into the rest of Canada and ensure that “Alberta remains Canada’s economic engine for years to come.”
A September report from the Alberta Treasury Branch found that almost 10,000 more people moved to Alberta from other parts of Canada in the second quarter of 2022.
In the same quarter, Ontario lost the largest number of people to interprovincial immigration and contributed the most number of new Alberta residents. A total of 21,008 Ontarians left for other provinces, including 6,281 who moved to Alberta. Those leaving the province were largely made up of young people around 25.
According to a Statistics Canada report released in December, Alberta workers continue to have the highest weekly earnings of any province, at $1,268. Alberta families earned a median after-tax income of $104,000 in 2020 — $7,000 more than Ontarian families.
Alberta’s Short-Term Employment Forecast says high and moderately high-demand occupations include: restaurant and food service managers, software engineers and designers, web designers and developers, transport truck drivers, registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses, accounting technicians and bookkeepers, and shippers and receivers.
