Community Futures Central Kootenay receives its core funding through Western Economic Diversification and has been supporting small businesses to be successful and our rural region to be economically healthy for close to 35 years.

The West Kootenay communities of Castlegar, Nelson, Trail and Rossland, which I am here representing today, are located in the southeast corner of the province of B.C., and we have very interconnected economies. Frequently, residents work in one community and live in another.

Like many rural regions, the West Kootenay region faces economic and demographic challenges, including out-migration of youth, aging populations and labour market shortages. This makes it difficult for small business owners to meet their labour market needs, which in turn hinders economic growth. This labour shortage has intensified as a result of the pandemic.

The B.C. “Labour Market Outlook” projects close to 20,000 new positions opening in the Kootenays by 2028 due to retiring workers, with another 4,400 anticipated through economic growth. As such, it's crucial that West Kootenay communities have access to a skilled workforce for our businesses to be competitive. Labour force replacement ratios for our region range from 0.5 to 0.75, and a ratio of less than 1 means that an area is unable to maintain the current labour force with local replacement workers.

Business retention and expansion research conducted in partnership with Selkirk College's Applied Research and Innovation Centre has identified that the majority of our employers state that access to a skilled workforce is their biggest barrier to growth. In order to be competitive in the global economy, West Kootenay employers require highly skilled workers in a range of industries, including mining, metallurgy, forestry, manufacturing, health care, transportation, construction, education and technology, as well as entry-level employees in fields like retail, tourism, accommodation and food services.

Our region relies on immigrants to meet labour market demand, and we are very happy to be one of 11 communities across Canada that has been part of the rural and northern immigration pilot. In order to create capacity to implement this pilot, we have secured two separate grants, without which the pilot would not be the success it has been to date. With the funding from those grants, we were able to engage Erin Rooney as our West Kootenay rural and northern immigration pilot regional coordinator, who is going to tell you a bit about how it has gone.

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