Earn big money in Canada

Gary Jacobsen
Published: June 17, 2008

How would you like a job that will pay you, after a relatively short training period, up to $130,000 a year? Looks too good to be true? Not so. If you are able-bodied and can drive a large (actually, very
large) truck, Alberta, Canada may have a job waiting for you.

As most readers know, Canada exports more oil to the United States than any other country, including Saudi Arabia. Much of this oil comes from conventional wells, but an estimated 40 percent of all
Canadian oil production is in the form of oil sands, principally from the Athabasca oil sands field in Alberta.

Oil sand is not the same as oil shale, which is oil impregnated in rock. Rather, it is oil-saturated sand that is simply scooped up, loaded into large dump trucks and hauled to oil-extraction facilities.

The oil sand petroleum deposits in and around the town of Ft. McMurray, 272 miles north of Edmonton, may be the largest in the world, covering 54,132 square miles-an area about the size of Wisconsin.
Currently, more than a million barrels of oil per day are being extracted from the oil sands, and as the worldwide price of oil continues upward, production steadily increases.

That brings me to the job offer. The Canadians need drivers who can handle huge Caterpillar 797B dump trucks that cost upwards of $3.5 million each. Arguably, the 797B is the largest dump truck in the
world, with a payload of 380 tons. One driver said it is so big that “It is like going upstairs in my house, sitting on my bed and driving the house downtown.”

In spite of the high wages, many Canadians shun the truck driving jobs because the work is hard, the hours are long, the weather is extreme, and the town of Ft. McMurray offers little respite from the
arduous work schedule. The average temperatures vary from minus 3 degrees F in January to plus 63 degrees F in July. The area gets 68 inches of snow annually. Also, housing is scarce and expensive.
A no-frills two-bedroom apartment may rent for $3,500 monthly, and a two-bedroom mobile home sells for $300,000 or more. An average home costs $600,000, according to Time magazine. The total
population of Ft. McMurray is 65,000, about one-sixth the size of Prince William County.

Americans who wish to drive the big rigs and earn the big bucks should be careful about one thing, however: Canadian rules about foreign workers. An American must get a work permit, and that will
normally require a job offer from a Canadian company. However, before they can offer jobs to Americans, the companies must first advertise for Canadian workers and obtain a Labor Market Opinion
(LMO). This entire process can be cumbersome and time-consuming; as a result, companies that are in great need of drivers often hire foreign workers with minimal attention to the credentials
requirement.

Further complicating the job picture are municipal “resolutions” that are designed to limit the number of foreign workers. Feeling that only Canadians should get well-paying jobs throughout Alberta, local
officials sometimes communicate anti-immigrant views to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), which is roughly analogous to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States.

Americans who are discovered driving the big trucks illegally are not called criminals; rather they are treated as “undocumented workers” who are nevertheless subject to deportation. Generally, however,
CIC works to resolve documentation problems with both the employer and the employee. As is true throughout Canada, each case is considered on its individual merits.

Sources:

http://www.alberta-canada.com/immigration/

http://www.ags.gov.ab.ca/activities/cbm/alberta_oil_sands.html

Time, June 2, 2008, “Global Business.”

Gary Jacobsen lives in Woodbridge.