In October, major newspapers reported that 2,000 Chinese miners would soon arrive as temporary foreign workers at the HD Mining coal project near Tumbler Ridge. The news concerned British Columbians. And labour unions filed a petition in court to block the Chinese miners from taking local workers’ jobs.

Since then, media outlets have reported that court documents revealed the mining company listed an ability to speak Mandarin as a condition for recruitment.

If we examine this matter on a deeper level, it shows that an incompetent provincial government has failed to look after the interests of British Columbians.

In 2007, the China-backed Canadian Dehua International Mines Group Inc. told the B.C. Liberal government that it “will require approximately 400 employees with specific skills in underground coal mining”.  

In 2008, the province spent $1.3 million on a mining labour-force study that recommended a new category—"underground mine worker"—to receive training.  The B.C. Liberal government failed to act on that suggestion.

In November 2011, notes of a meeting in Beijing show that the premier and her staff were aware that HD Mining intended to fill over half of the workforce for its Murray River mine project with its own workers. Yet our premier did not make an effort to ensure the project’s jobs went to British Columbians.

The company's transition plan states that it intends to use temporary foreign workers for 30 months to build the mine. Then if the mine is approved, the foreign workers would operate it for another two years.

After that, HD Mining plans to train Canadians and recruit local miners at a rate of 10 percent of the workforce per year. Thus, it would take 10 years, or 14.5 years from the building of the mine, to have the entire operation run by Canadian labour.

The controversy has often revolved around whether Canada has enough skilled underground miners. However, the early exploration and building of the mine site involves work on the surface, not deep underground. It’s amazing that the mining company can’t find Canadian workers able to do this work above ground, and that for the first four-and-a-half years, HD Mining must rely entirely on Chinese temporary workers.

When the mining company’s stewards met with Clark a year ago, they requested bringing in foreign workers to fill more than half the workforce to operate the mine.  When our premier seemed not to care about it, the company chose to operate the mine entirely with temporary foreign workers.

When foreigners invest in China, the Chinese government would require the use of local workers.  

Yet our government has not done its job in this coal-mine project; it failed to train local skilled workers and it hasn't looked after Canadian workers’ employment opportunities.

As a result of our incompetent provincial government, an uproar has been created in our community.  After a great many of our manufacturing and call-centre jobs have been moved to Asia, people worry that high-paying resource jobs will also be taken away from local workers.

If the B.C. government had accepted the recommendation of its mining labour-force study and started training underground miners years ago—or if our premier had pressed for more local workers being hired for the mine project when she met with company executives—we wouldn’t have to face this mess now.

Even if the company could operate according to its plan, the Chinese temporary foreign workers would meet lots of challenges. That's because there are significant differences in the mining industries, environmental and labour standards, and regulations between China and Canada, plus the language barrier, for any mine that is wholly operated by temporary foreign workers from China.

Gabriel Yiu is a small businessperson and the NDP candidate in Vancouver-Fraserview.