New mobile realities in mature staples-dependent resource regions: Local governments and work camps

In resource-dependent regions, work camps have reshaped workforce recruitment and retention strategies and relationships with communities as they are increasingly deployed within municipal boundaries. This has prompted important, but controversial, questions about local government policies and regulations guiding workforce accommodations to support rapid growth in resource regions. Even as mobile workforces become more prevalent, however, few researchers have examined the development, operations, and decommissioning of these work camps. Drawing upon the experiences of local governments in Australia, Canada, Scotland, and the United States, this research examines how mobile workforces are shaping the opportunities and challenges of planning and local government operations through work camps integrated in mature staples-dependent resource regions. Our findings reveal that while some industries have taken the initiative to implement new protocols and operating procedures to improve the quality and safety of work camp environments, local governments have underdeveloped policy tools and capacities to guide the development, operations, and decommissioning of work camps. Failure to purposefully address work camps as a land-use issue, however, is significant for mature staples-dependent towns that ultimately fail to capture taxation revenues while incurring the accelerating costs for infrastructure and services associated with large mobile workforces

The structural underpinnings impacting rapid growth in resource regions

Decades of economic restructuring have transformed the nature of work and community relationships in resource hinterlands. Towns once built to accommodate large local workforces are now immersed in much more fluid flows of labour and capital. In some resource regions, proposed mining, oil and gas, and hydro projects may provide potential opportunities to diversify and strengthen communities. However, many community and industry stakeholders have concerns about community capacity and readiness for the anticipated “boomtown” circumstance of rapid growth and development. Drawing upon experiences from Canada, the US, Australia, and Scotland, this research examines structural impediments undermining the capacity of local stakeholders to respond to the challenges and opportunities associated with rapid growth and mobile workforces. Our findings suggest that policies and information structures have not been retooled and redesigned to support mobile workforces. Key structural concerns include obsolete policies and regulations to guide the development, tracking, and decommissioning of work camps; limited information and demographic data about mobile workforces; the problem of different methodologies being used to forecast growth and impacts; underdeveloped information management systems to track the cumulative impacts of single and multiple resource projects; and an absence of orientation packages and information portals for industry and mobile workers

On the Move: Labour Mobility and Community Capacity: Full Report

A key change in Canada’s resource towns has been the growth of mobile workforces. Labour mobility presents numerous opportunities and challenges for workers and communities in rural and small town settings. The On the Move Partnership is a Canadian research initiative investigating workers’ extended travel and absence from their places of permanent residence for work. In Canada, many workers are ‘on the move’. Multiple factors are fueling employment-related mobility in Canada: improvements in transportation and communications, an aging population, mismatches between work opportunities and local labour supplies, rural and remote resource development, an increase in precarious employment, economic volatility, housing costs, as well as policy changes and other development