Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Back in 2013, there weren’t a lot of energy companies at the Estevan Comprehensive School career day, but at least there were some, like Enbridge, seen here. Jeff Yanko, in red, worked for Enbridge at the time and frequently took part in such events. Yanko passed away in 2022. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
There’s a constant refrain I often hear: “We can’t find workers.”
It’s usually followed by, “We don’t know where to find them. We don’t even know where to look anymore.”
This is especially prevalent when it comes to drilling and service rigs, but is an issue not just in the energy sector, but across the entire economy. As the last of the baby boomers retire, we GenXers are finding out we didn’t have enough babies. As a result, Gen Z, the kids graduating high school, are among the smallest generations to date, proportionally speaking.
So imagine my shock when my son and I found zero energy businesses at the local high school career day last week.
Some background: a career day held in early March, 1992, changed my life entirely. If it wasn’t for that career day at the Yorkton Regional High School, I never would have ended up as a journalist, and you wouldn’t be reading this.
Up until that point, my high school plan was to go into law school. But after falling asleep in Court of Queen’s Bench during a Law 30 class trip, I decided to look at other options.
Standing behind a table with a few papers on it in the main hall of the school was a very bored Murray Lyons, then-editor of the Yorkton This Week. I walked up to him and explained I was the editor of the school newspaper. I dragged him to my office, dropped a handful of back issues into his hands and said, “Please tell me what I’m doing wrong, and how can I fix it?”
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Two weeks later Murray called, said he really liked the column I wrote in one of those papers. He asked me to add 150 words and send it to him for publication. Then he asked if I could write a column for him every second week. That soon led to a pile of freelance writing and photography throughout my Grade 12 year. That column ran for 28 years until COVID took my job with Pipeline News, and this column you are reading, today, is an extension of it.
And when engineering college didn’t work out for me and pipeline work dried up, it was journalism that kept me fed, and has done so to this day.
All from a career day encounter.
So the other day Estevan Comprehensive School put on a career day. I believe they had one earlier in the year as well, or perhaps the previous spring.
I texted my son, Spencer, who is 17 and in Grade 11, to come home, put on a nice shirt, comb his hair, and grab his business cards so he could hand them out to any prospective employers. The card said, “Seeking Electrician Apprenticeship Summer 2025,” and his particulars.
He had already popped into the event during the school day, and was notably disappointed in it. No matter, we were going, I said.
There were maybe 15 or so schools of various types, mostly trade schools. They varied from the machining program at Saskatchewan Polytechnic to a multi-media program. Even the border patrol was there, looking for a few good young men and women.
(The Universities of Saskatchewan and Regina, as well as the military and SaskPower were at the last career day. They were no-shows this day.)
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But to my surprise, there were only two businesses there that I saw – an auto wrecker and an agricultural equipment chain. Not one energy-related business had a table. No drilling rigs, service rigs, electrical, trucking, oilfield construction, surveying, supply stores, artificial lift, dirt moving, welding, fabrication, chemical, geology, engineering – nothing. The closest thing to anything directly energy-related was Energy Safety Canada, which was also present at the last one.
It was as if the energy industry didn’t exist in the Energy City.
If this event was in Regina, I would understand none of those businesses coming. But Estevan? The Energy City? A huge number of these kids have parents who work or have worked in the energy sector, including SaskPower and the coal mines. They at least have a clue of what dad or mom does. They might even have an inclination to follow in their footsteps, or do something related. Maybe dad used to take them out to the lease on occasion?
If there are any high school kids, anywhere in Saskatchewan, that might have an inclination to work in the energy sector, you would think they attend Estevan Comprehensive School. Or Weyburn. Or Lloydminster. Or Carlyle. Or Carnduff. You get the idea.
And unlike kids from the big city, who have been brainwashed to think the energy sector is the devil, these kids might actually appreciate what good-paying jobs are available.
In the years before COVID, this event was attended by oilfield service companies, although never to the extent I would have expected. I covered it several times. I distinctly recall interviewing electrical contractors who were very interested in talking to young people. The career day had to be held in the gymnasium to get them all the schools and businesses in. And last week hardly filled half of the much-smaller cafeteria.
Contrast this to the following morning, when the Saskatchewan Common Ground Alliance held its annual contractor breakfast to encourage everyone to dig safe this year. When I pulled up, the parking lot was jam-packed with pickups – mostly ¾ and one tons – plastered with company decals. I had to park at the far end of the parking lot across the street, it was that well-attended.
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Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan has added a new mantra to his presentations. “Hire and borrow, hire and borrow, hire and borrow.”
“We are in the cheapest and most abundant labor environment we are going to see for 22 years, and the cheapest capital we’re going to see for 12,” he told Capital Press on Dec. 29. It’s a mantra he’s echoed many times in recent months. Due to demographic shifts in the United States, and much more so in Canada, we are going to be increasingly short on young people entering the workforce.
He’s not saying there’s a lot of young workers presently. He’s saying the number is only going to get smaller. If someone walks in the door, Zeihan encourages businesses to hire them, because there might not be a chance later.
It’s not just businesses, but the military, as well, which is why both the American and Canadian militaries are in crisis mode, falling well below their recruiting goals.
The reality is that energy companies should be calling the schools in the towns they are based in and asking, “Please, please, can we take part in any career fair you might have?” They should be offering job shadowing as much as possible, to get these kids in the door, and expose them to what the possibilities are.
It’s a lot easier to catch a fish in your own pond than to cast a line further afield. And if you’re not looking for new recruits in your local high school, where are you looking?
Maybe some of these energy companies were disappointed with previous career days, and have become jaded. That may be, but as Wayne Gretzky is famous for saying, “You miss 100 per cent of the shots you don’t take.”
So my kid, who spent Easter break taking his safety tickets specifically so he can work in the energy field, had a handful of business cards to hand out to prospective employers. He wants to work. He wants an apprenticeship, in an energy-related trade. And there was no one there, from the energy sector, to take his card.
How many hundred other kids walked through that career fair? Every one was an opportunity missed.
We have to do better.
Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@pipelineonline.ca.
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