Hydraboss

IT jobs for $55k? Can't see why that would be a problem. My receptionist makes over $40k. I ask again; what qualifications do you have? If you are just a recent grad, no I'm not going to hire you for that kind of cash. Our company could (and has) run ads on the NAIT and SAIT websites, and we get a ton of guys who will be graduating and, like you, want the golden goose the minute they get out. Newsflash! You haven't paid your dues yet. Hell, you haven't paid your first student loan installment. You have no real world experience, and yet you want me to pay you like you have 6-8 years in the business. There are a multitude of jobs in Alberta of pretty much every description. What we are not looking for is "you owe me a job that comes with a company vehicle and a golf membership" types that seem to think that entry level is beneath them. Guess what? You're entry level. Mikedavid, if you are not this person and you have some experience and proper credentials in the IT field, how is it possible that you can't operate the web well enough to find work out here that suits "your position"? p.s. - Just so you know, HR is one of the best paying jobs in industry. You start around $40k, and after 10 years or so (or equivalent experience) most HR Managers - General are making over $100k. Check your facts. www.salary.com

Not 100% sure (I'm not in HR). Those were the only starting wages that I could pull on my computer. The rest of the wages I quoted were from WCB earnings info that I have on my desk. Are you a trucker looking for work? We could use the people.

Our starting wage for class 1 rig movers (tractor drivers) is $29.00/hr. Picker operators start about $34.00/hr (with a ticket).

Accounting (Lvl I, II, and III), HR positions (all levels), supervisory positions in the services division (not truly white collar, but not completely blue. Let's call them grey collar). The corp has positions available in the HSE (health, safety and environmental) at an entry level, and many, many more. If you don't like those, Tim Horton's in Leduc is looking for day or night staff (pick your own shifts) starting at $13.50 an hour plus benefits. Movie Gallery is looking for evening shifts. Only starts at $10.50/hour, but you get free movies. The local rag (small town paper) has seven pages of want ads this week (of course, it only comes out on Thursday's). Car dealerships are looking for sales people, truck driver's are in high demand. Name the type of labour position you want and it's yours. 178 full time positions posted on the Capital Health and Caritas Health websites for FULL TIME RN'S. www.capitalhealth.ca So you want white collar? What are your qualifications? Are you willing to work? Let me know and I'll see what I can do.

mikedavid, why don't you get on a bus and come to Alberta. I'll give you a job. Bring your friends, too.

As for jobs.... Our corporation has transportation services (highway, rig moving, specialty hauling) and we are always looking for clean class 1's. Average rig mover (driver) makes around 85-110k/year, his swampers (the ones that actually want to work) make around 80k. In the more labour-intensive, oilfield services division we have 18 year old labourers that average about $16/hr, 70 hours a week. It is not uncommon for a labourer in our corp. to make 80-95k. For that money, they are on call 24-7 and work out of town on rig sites. Could be gone three weeks at a time. Any wonder why the majority are single? The in-town labourers are making the same wage, but only put in 50-70 hours per week (1 1/2 OT after 40hrs). They still make a decent living at 45-65k. Someone with technical qualifications can make 60k and work banker's hours, or you might be in short supply and nail down 80k for the same work. Check the websites of the major oilfield service companies, and even the oil and gas producers. Everyone is looking for just about every type of employee there is. Our corp. is looking to hire 3000 people this year alone (2007). That includes everything from branch managers to labourers. The work is there if you want it.

M.Dancer, would you mind making that Anglo-Albertan-racist crack just one more time? Only first I would like you to call 630CHED in Edmonton (talk radio) and then say it. It would help the seperation thing more than many other things that could be said. Please? They have an 800 number.

What, you think "Boutilier Superhighway" would have been too much?

What the hell is with Lyle Giving-it-all-to-the-teachers-and-unions Oberg in Finance? The man can't find enough money for a decent, much-needed haircut, but Eddie's going to let him handle my money? Jeez. Ted should have moved up the list by one spot. Should have given Guy the Transportation portfolio, and then 63 would finally get twinned.

Wrong. Welfare is not a right. It is a social safety net program. If the government of the day wanted to cancel it, they could. Therefore it is not a right of any kind. It is also not an insurance program. You don't have to pay into it in order to collect. And it has nothing to do with a driver's license.

While it is true that taxpayers fund equalization, they also fund....uhmmm.....everything. The fact that the taxpayers in question happen to live/work in two provinces makes it a fair statement that Ontario and Alberta fund this organized theft. I guess the true distinction would be whether the taxpayers funding the system see themselves first as Canadians or Ontarians/Albertans. When you have the answer to that, then you can definitively state who funds what. You seem to have the belief that people living within Canada are just Canadians, and that provincial and territorial boundaries are only there for electoral purposes and lines on a map. I would suggest that there is more than one person from "the eastern side of Canada" that is awfully proud to be a "Newfoundlander", and not just a "Canadian". Province before country . There are more people that believe this than I think you are prepared to acknowledge.

Hi let me dip into this one. I agree with you. I also believe in peoples right to choice but here is where my ideals get a little mixed. Having volunteered in the food bank for a few years I wonder how we can help these young people? One family was mentally challenged, the whole family. The father would try anything, he just could not achieve the level in any paying job that government regulations required. The children, as they grew into adults, were very protected by their parents and were very high in self esteem. But again they tended to live in a world that did not exist for the rest of us. The son loved computers, but he volunteered in a CAP project and had no idea what he was doing. For the sake of the other volunteers, whom he tended to try to order around, he had to be let go. What do you do with these people.? Another example is of a disfunctional family and this is a more common one. The children tended to be very aggressive for whatever reason, but probably because of what went on at home, and created problems for everyone. I know of a school board that recognized problems in such a family but when they recommended intervention in this family they were threatened with a law suit. They backed off in a hurry. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not there are a lot of disfuntional families out there. These are the ones where the children tend to drop out or create problems in schools. Disfunction is caused by families that cannot get along, where there is bullying by one or both of the parents, where there is drug and alchohol abuse and where parents do not have any value for education themselves and do not encourage their children to become educated. In Ontario, where good alternate high schools were set up supporting the trades, there was a strong culture of people looking down on children who were sent to these schools, they were the dummies. No parent wanted their child to have that stigma attached to them even if they knew their children had high IQ's but would rather be a house builder than a doctor. Now Ontario is in a huge crunch were the blue collar labour force is disappearing. There are also the ones who have no level of self esteem or of a work ethic, who are quite happy to do nothing. What do we do with them? They will get married, they will create children, what do we do, let them starve? I don't know were peoples rights come into all this, the right of the wage earner to have some say in how his money is spent, the right of the ones on welfare to do nothing if they so choose . And lots of people get on welfare and use food banks through no fault of their own, luck has a lot to do with what happens to one to. Any other ideas on this. What has any of this got to do with high school as a driving prerequisite? It is a simple matter to pick out one or two dysfunctional families. The one you describe shouldn't be driving anyway, any of them. Blue collar high schools are still that...high school. NO ONE HAS A RIGHT TO STAY ON WELFARE - NO EXCEPTIONS. This pisses me off to no end. Welfare is not a right. Welfare is not a right. For those that may not have heard me...Welfare is not a right. What the hell does welfare or drug abuse or aggressive children have to do with a driver's license???????

quote/ At 26 weeks after their arrival, 50% of all immigrants aged 25 to 44 were employed. This was 30 percentage points below the employment rate of about 80% among all individuals aged 25 to 44 in the Canadian population. This gap is not surprising given that immigrants had a limited amount of time to get established in the labour force and many settlement activities to deal with. At 52 weeks after arrival, the employment rate among prime working-age immigrants was 58%. This narrowed the gap to 23 percentage points. At 104 weeks, or two years after arrival, the employment rate among prime working-age immigrants was 63%, 18 percentage points below the national rate of 81%. /quote jdobbin, from your link, it is clear that these numbers are not proving what you intended. Even at 104 weeks, only 63% of prime workers were working. What about their families? What about spouses and children and parents? These are huge costs to Canada's health care system. What about the 37% of prime workers who aren't working? Canada has enough Canadian citizens that are not paying taxes and therefore a draw on tightly streched health care dollars. This is unfair to the taxpaying Canadians that must: 1) pay extra taxes to cover health care costs 2) wait in ever-lengthening lines for health care services 3) absorb all of the extra social system costs for these people We most certainly should not be allowing immigration of people who are not able to pay sufficient taxes to contribute, for what their family will take out of the system, immediately. This is why I endorse New Zealand's immigration policy - work visa's only and any permanent residency applications are based on your ability to maintain employment (aka employer's intent of employment letter). At least this was the way it was years ago when I looked into moving there.

This is a thread on health care reforms that we feel may be required. Immigration may affect this, so it is valid.

It took me one minute to get more current numbers. http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/051013/d051013b.htm "New data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC) show that 80% of immigrants aged between 25 and 44 worked in at least one job during their first two years in Canada." That link also stated that of those same immigrants, the 80% number was people who worked during their first two years. The respective employment rates of those immigrants was from 30% to 58%. So actually, MikeDavid's point is well supported by your link.

Then it's probably a good thing I didn't use the phrase "unrestricted ownership". Please define "administer" as it is used in the constitution.

I'll leave you alone when conservatives leave me alone to smoke pot, leave homosexuals alone to get married and leave women alone to choose what to do with their bodies. Deal? I'll get on that too when libs stop pressuring me to smoke pot, flood our culture with pot, stop forcing people to marry homosexuals when they don't want to , and quit hounding us when we see a woman being a whore and taking her to task for it. here's some more, when libs stop saying that only liberal values are canadian values and conservative ones don't count, when the libs stop their revolving door "injustice" system, when the libs stop stealing our tax money to fund pointless programs like state run daycare... Good God, I can't believe that I actually read this and was thinking along the lines of the way BD responded to it. All I could think was "WTF?" Man, I have to start reading more carefully.

What does this "crack dealer" comment have to do with anything? If these guys had openly beat the church-going house owner to death with, oh I don't know, a baseball bat and an aluminum hockey stick, etc, they still would have received house arrest. Did you forget that this is the Canadian Injustice System? Our system is based on rehabilitation not punishment. The fact that this guy was/is a drug dealer has no bearing on what these guys did. PEOPLE DON'T GET PUNISHED IN THIS COUNTRY.

Saturn, the reality is that the doctors and nurses that would move over to "higher paying" private positions are the ones that will move to the States if Canada doesn't offer the private option. It already happens with droves of RN's from Alberta (and we have the highest pay as per the UNA CBA in the country). So that leaves us with the option: Give them the pay and benefit of working in the private sector, or just hold the door open when they move out of the country. Your number of 50,000 doc's is not static. We are losing them now, so if the residency spots are not being made available the number will dwindle.

As long as the current lines are drawn as to the jurisdiction of the province of Alberta, only the province has any "claim" on the resources within it's borders. If Ft.MacMurray seperated and was recognized as such, then the remainder of Alberta would have no "claim" to those resources. Until any seperation happens, the current laws of Canada have force.

Figleaf, people like you and Saturn need to get some time in front of the national press. With attitudes like yours being broadcast around Canada, my hopes of Alberta seperation would be hugely fueled. I am even noticing a considerable shift on this board towards support for an independant Nation of Alberta. Good work. Keep it up.

A university degree is an absolute requirement for a person to be able to use phrases like: "I will be resecting the bowel before I begin the bypass." and "I find it hard to believe that previous science was unable to discover the origin of dark matter, when it is so obviously simple." and "Would you like fries with that, or would you prefer the side salad for $2.95 more?" Sometimes a post-secondary education is highly overrated...sometimes it's not. I probably wouldn't want a grade 10 dropout conducting surgery on me.

Fig, I like the idea...as long as you abolish the federal government. Then I could vote for your "more sensitivity to the local issues of their smaller territory" type of governance.

Well, if you're eating crow....come over to my table. I'm just about to begin dining myself. (voted Morton). Pass the salsa.

Name the last group of politicians (of ANY stripe) that gave us 10% of our money's worth.