Anyone in the region who wants to work will have a job over the next decade, says the city’s mayor.
Keith Hobbs recently returned from the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference in Toronto that saw more than 30,000 delegates attend.
People attending the conference expect more than 55,000 new mining jobs to be created in the region in the coming years.
“It is exciting times. I’m saying in five to seven years if anybody’s unemployed then they’re just lazy. That’s what we’re hearing. We’re hearing it from all of the mining companies that Thunder Bay is going to be a boom city,” Hobbs said Thursday afternoon.
While the actual mining will be done in other parts of the region, Hobbs said Thunder Bay will be a home base for those companies.
“We are going to be the capital city of the Ring of Fire and I told (Ontario mines minister) Mr. Bartolucci that we are the capital of the North, not Sudbury, and I’m going to keep hammering away at that message,” he said.
Hobbs said he met with provincial ministers discussing everything from energy to housing as mining activity grows the region.
Education to create more skilled labourers was also discussed.
“We’re already preparing for that but we need to do more,” he said.
