By Gail Jansen, Photos by Bill Braden With high-tech jobs ranging from heavy equipment to mineral processing, today’s miner isn't stereotypical. Gone from today’s landscape is the miner with a pickaxe in one hand, a shovel in the other, and a lantern strapped to his pack. The NWT Mine Training Society, Aurora College and the mines themselves are working to fill the needs with local talent.
David Swisher hopes to hire a lot of people in the coming years. As vice-president of operations for Avalon Rare Metals, whose Nechalacho project near Yellowknife is in the pre-construction phase, he’ll need more than 200 workers in a variety of fields.
“We’ll have a need for maintenance support personnel, skilled maintenance mechanics, and other trade skills, including electricians,” says Swisher. “We will also require skilled employees that are familiar with being able to operate certain portions of the plant, both through automation and computer skills.”
John Kearney, president of Canadian Zinc Corporation, whose Prairie Creek Mine in the Deh Cho region is also nearing construction start-up, says his workforce estimates are to directly employ some 120 workers for pre-construction and another 220 workers in production.
Both men would like their needs to be met locally, if possible. But their demands for a sophisticated and high tech workforce have created an urgent need for basic and higher-level education. While the industry can provide some basic skills and in-house, on-the-job training, its need for a more skilled workforce requires collaborations.
“Mining companies are in the business of exploring and mining,” says Kearney, who is also president of the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines. “We are not in the business of teaching or training, at least not in non-job-specific training. As such we do not have the resources or the expertise to engage in teaching or training activities.”
If these jobs are to be filled by Northerners, it will only be with the help of services offered by the NWT Mine Training Society and Aurora College. Hilary Jones, the general manager at the MTS, has been working to establish the partnerships that will help fill many more positions in the coming years. She is the first to admit that it’s a hard battle, if for no other reason than simple math.
“We’ll never be able to fill the entire mine site. We just don’t have the population base,” she says. “But we’re working very closely with the mines, and they’re very keen to participate in our training and hire those who can meet their employment standards.”
The MTS and the mines participated in an assessment in 2008 to determine what kind of positions needed to be filled. Jobs high on the list for the operating diamond mines include such positions as drillers, plant operators, heavy equipment operators, mineral processors and underground miners. “The focus for our training and what the mines are looking for are in those skilled and semi-skilled areas,” says Jones. “Those types of jobs alone make up 50 per cent of the current employment need.”
Trade apprenticeships are also in high demand, everything from electricians to millwrights, from carpenters to camp cooks. Even those in the administrative and clerical fields fall into the skilled and semi-skilled listing of personnel whose demand is on the rise. The 2008 assessment estimated that 2,700 workers would be needed in the following five years. New estimates have that figure sitting closer to the 5,000 mark.
The basic frameworks for hiring local come from the Socio Economic Monitoring Agreements the mines entered into with the NWT government. They set targets for Northern hires, and while the Ekati and Diavik diamond mines have managed to meet their targets, they continue to look at increasing their Northern hires not only as a way of managing their human resource needs in the most cost-effective manner possible, but also as a way of leaving something tangible behind.
“The mines themselves are very keen on leaving a legacy rather than just a hole in the ground,” says Jones. “They want to be able to train individuals, so that when the mines do shut down, they can take their high-end skills back to the community, not only in the trades themselves, but hopefully in supervisory and managerial capacities as well.”
To that end, the mines and the MTS have been working closely with Aurora College to develop programs to help raise literacy and numeracy levels, provide life and work skills, and give access to additional training so that those who are willing and able to work in the skilled and semi-skilled areas have the training and support necessary to do so.
“We are not a training institute,” says Jones. “We are what I would like to call a facilitating trainer, or the go-to organization. We have the capacity and the ability to work a little faster and more nimbler than governments and other institutions.”
“It’s definitely a training-to-employment focus,” says Jones of her mandate, and new and innovative training initiatives are looked to as a big part of the solution.
The move to community-based training
While making a living in a wage-based economy as opposed to the traditional land-based economy may have the appeal of higher earning potential for many Northerners, experience has proven that a career in mining isn’t for everyone. And finding that out sooner rather than later can go a long way to ensuring satisfaction for both employee and employer alike.
For this reason, the MTS has moved away from providing initial training at the mine-site and towards community-based programming. Jones says that bringing introductory training sessions directly into the small communities around the North, rather than requiring students to leave home at the onset of training, has helped keep students in their comfort zone as they explore career possibilities.
“They’re in their communities and they have the support of their family,” explains Jones. “They haven’t just been taken away and thrown into a larger centre, which has been proven to have lower success rates.”
“By using community-based training, it allows an individual to make an informed career choice and ask themselves, ‘Do I really want to do this?” she says. “It may be fun driving the truck, but then you also have to think about the two-weeks-in and two-weeks-out aspect to mining, and all of the ramifications that has. It gives them a pretty good idea of what they can expect once they arrive on site.”
And what if at the end of that community-based training, the student decides the mining life is not for them?
“No training is wasted,” stresses Jones. “A person may choose to not leave the community, but they’ve still been given a set of skills that they can use at home. And if they do wish to pursue a career in mining, we can bring them along further in their training at one of the larger centres.”
That training can include being a part of the award-winning Underground Miners Training Program. Winner of the 2009 Premier’s Award for Collaboration, the Underground Miners Program is a partnership between the mines, Aboriginal groups, the MTS, and Aurora College. It has been instrumental in helping the area’s three diamond mines successfully make the transition from surface mining to underground mining over the past few years.
Once graduated from the six-week, community-based introduction to underground mining, students begin a 12-week training component in Yellowknife. The longer portion includes both academic studies and hands-on training through a new $1.5-million, state-of-the-art simulator funded jointly by BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, and De Beers Canada, owners of the Ekati, Diavik and Snap Lake mines, respectively.
Similar in nature to a flight simulator, the underground mining simulator allows students to experience what it’s like to operate a wide variety of underground mining equipment, while at the same time dodge the many safety challenges thrown their way, including fires and cave-ins, without the inherent risks. It’s an aspect of the training that has helped to give students the confidence needed to move on to the next stage of their training where they work on site with a mentor by their side.
For those who successfully complete the entire 32-week program, a level five miners certification awaits. Jones says it gives the students confidence and gives their employers confidence in knowing that graduates have been prepared to head underground.
It’s also a program that is easily transferable from its current diamond mine application to other mining operations. “Zinc mines will use different processes to extract the mineral but basically diamond, gold and zinc mines all have to crush the ore, so there are very similar processes in each of the plants,” says Arnold Enge, Aurora College’s new coordinator for industrial and mine training. “We may have to adjust a little bit, but by and large, the bulk of it is similar, and underground mining in diamond mines versus zinc mines is practically the same.”
Hit the ground running
As the only kids on the block in recent years, BHP, Rio Tinto and De Beers have had to work hard to get training programs in place. Newer operations, however, can build on their efforts and hit the ground running. When it comes time for Avalon, Canadian Zinc or anyone else to find the employees they need for their own developments, they can tailor existing programs to meet their needs.
For the MTS, the experience earned in working with the diamond mines has it primed and ready to work with operations preparing for start-up. It has entered training partnerships with Canadian Zinc, Avalon, Tamerlane Ventures (which is redeveloping the historic Pine Point project near Hay River) and Fortune Minerals, which is developing the NICO cobalt-bismuth-copper deposit northwest of Yellowknife.
“All three diamond mines are on our board of directors,” says Jones, “but we have more partners around the table. When mines are opening, like Canadian Zinc or Avalon, we’re already working with them on identifying training opportunities for potential employees and scaling it so that it meets the needs of both the mine and the community.”
Jones mentions the three-month diamond drilling program that ran last year. It was established to address the shortage of qualified diamond drillers and helpers in the North, and combined the resources of the MTS, Avalon, Peak Drilling and Aurora College. Of the eleven graduates of the program, ten were immediately employed by Avalon.
“That worked out really well,” says Avalon CEO Don Bubar, “so we’re certainly looking to work more with the Mine Training Society, Aurora College and others to identify where the needs are, and start organizing and designing those programs.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by John Kearney, president of Canadian Zinc, who has also had a successful training program implemented for his Prairie Creek mine.
“The Mine Training Society acts as a very useful medium for collecting and focusing the activities and funding support of industry, and leveraging that by accessing government funding and programs,” says Kearney. “It’s a good example of a public-private partnership which should work well for all involved and has done so to date.”
Staff from the company and from the training society went into the communities near the mine to tell people what training opportunities were available, and to encourage involvement. “It’s like bringing the school to the people rather than waiting for the people to go to the school,” says Kearney.
Taking the next step
From entry level positions that were needed at the start of operations to the new skilled and semi-skilled positions that are necessary to help mines transition to underground, the mines and their needs are continuously evolving, and the MTS plans to evolve right alongside them.
Jones looks forward to the day when the MTS can engage in the third and final level of training. She hopes to be able to provide the kind of training required to help employees reach supervisory and management level positions.
“We’re now talking about the development of the Aboriginal leadership program,” says Jones. “Diavik had its own Aboriginal leadership program in-house, and has turned that over to us and to the college [Aurora] to broaden it. Soon, all of the mines and the industrial sectors will be able to take advantage of that.”
While Jones acknowledges that most of the programming required for management level positions requires a university education, something the North does not yet have the capacity to offer, she still believes support through the MTS’s many partnerships, and programs like Aboriginal leadership development, will help those who are thinking of taking their careers to the next level.
“We’re already supporting some people who are working to get their business administration degrees,” says Jones. “We’re doing it in steps, and our next step will be to look to even more training opportunities for supervisory levels so that Northerners have an opportunity to move up the ladder.”
