Hi

First post on this forum after searching.

My partner (she is a teacher) and I (Chemical Process Engineer) are considering emmigrating to Canada.

We are both young (ish) 29 and 31, no children, and both degree educated with 6 and 9 years experince.

I curently work in the chemical industry and have experince of the oil and gas sector, mining and pharma.

Do you think we will have problems getting work over there?

I have previously worked in saskatoon, and loved it.

We are just fed up with the UK and see no future there.

With my partner as a teacher she is seeing the future people come though and they are not good! And NO you can not blame the teachers the rot is set in with the parents.

Anyway, so far I have only seen jobs in Fort McMurry, but on reading coments and looking at it it does not look to be the best place.

Great to hear from other people in oil industry.

Thanks

Hi Enzyme

Welcome to BE, you will find lots of help and info here.

You might want to get a coffee/tea and start here:

http://britishexpats.com/wiki/Teaching_in_Canada

http://britishexpats.com/wiki/Catego...Hunting-Canada

Hope this helps.

Hello, Enzyme, and welcome to the BE forum.

CHEMICAL ENGINEERS

Chemical engineers are listed amongst the Occupations under Pressure in Alberta and British Columbia, which is a good sign from your point of view. It suggests that it will be feasible for you to get a temporary work permit.

TEACHING

Cassie has covered that.

IMMIGRATION

You need to understand how to gain entry to Canada, so read Quick Guide to Canadian Immigration. Even if you had looked into this before, there have been some recent legislative changes, and the article explains them.

JOB HUNTING

Again, Cassie has pointed you in the right direction.

My personal tips are:

• Identify prospective employers in Canada.
  
  
• Phone prospective employers in Canada.
  
  
• Come to Canada on a recce trip, and meet prospective employers face-to-face.
  
  
• Thank everyone who gives you the time of day.

The Wiki article called Finding Job Opportunities, which is one of the articles in the series on Job Hunting in Canada, suggests ways of finding prospective employers. But I'll give you a head start. Try these websites:

• Info Oil Careers - Great source of information about jobs in the oil industry.
  
  
• Info Mine - Jobs in the mining industry.
  
  
• Chem Jobs - If you fossick around this website, you find a list of all of the chemical companies in Canada. I can't give you the exact URL, because they use frames and the URL doesn't change.
  
  
• Canada Pharma - Canada's research-based pharmaceutical companies
  
  
• Hire Ground - Job board, includes jobs in the oil industry.
  
  
• Association of Canadian Engineering Companies - Find out who their members are, and contact them directly.
  
  
• Consulting Engineers of Alberta - Same thing. Go the websites of their members, look at the career sections of those websites, and contact the relevant companies.

Also search the Canadian Company Capabilities website to find out which companies do what. You can use key words to search. You also can use that site to find out the NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) codes for various industries. If you add the NAICS codes to your searches, you can refine them even more precisely. The idea, again, is to identify companies and to contact them directly.

FINDING PEOPLE

Often you'll be able to find the names of relevant people on the companies' own websites. If you cannot, you could use LinkedIn to look for them.

Hope that helps.
x

I just wanted to clarify that my partner is a primary school teacher, ages 3 to 11.

Does this not come under the skills shortage or early childhood development?

There are no shortage of teachers in Canada. Worse still (from the prospective immigrants p.o.v) there are lots of Canadian teachers looking for jobs. Early Childhood education (as distinct from primary) is a different matter as I believe that is an occupation under pressure. ECE does not pay anything like as well as teaching does.

From the oil industry perspective you should consider Newfoundland as well as the industry is booming here and only going to get busier with new fields being developed. Considerably cheaper to buy a house here than in Alberta. (although that gap is closing surprisingly quickly.)

If I can get a job that pays for us both, should not be a problem?

[QUOTE=Atlantic Xpat;6550593

From the oil industry perspective you should consider Newfoundland as well as the industry is booming here and only going to get busier with new fields being developed. Considerably cheaper to buy a house here than in Alberta. (although that gap is closing surprisingly quickly.)[/QUOTE]

Atlantic Expat would you like to expand further on what is happening that side of Canada with respect to companies, new developments etc. This would be good for Enzyme and also us that work in the industry where all the focus is centred around Alberta.

JET

Well, I'm no expert on the oil and gas sector but................

Currently:

Three offshore installations in production: Terra Nova, White Rose and Hibernia.

Oil refinery at Arnolds Cove operated by North Atlantic.

Future:

MOU signed for Hebron field and an actual announcement due any day now. A fourth installation for which engineering and design is presumably about to start.

Hibernia South in the works.

Enough exploration planned to require a dedicated drill rig for the next 20 years. (Someone here wants to build a drill rig just to do that!)

Possible additional refinery for Placentia bay (if they can get funding).

Hydromet processing plant for Voiseys Bay Nickel to process ore from Labrador.

Lower Churchill Hydro power project for Labrador.

IOC expansion in Labrador West (Ore Mining)

So you've got oil majors (Husky, Exon, Chevron, Imperial Oil) etc, Refinery Operators (North Atlantic) and a whole slew of oil service companies and contractors. (Check out the 'Newfoundland Offshore Industries Assoc. website for a comprehensive list....http://www.noianet.com/)

All of this is likely to come in a perfect storm scenario where there is not going to be enough skilled resource here to meet demand. (A lot of it's out west in Alberta). So there is a real opportunity (IMHO) for immigrants. Check out the PNP website: http://www.nlpnp.ca/ .

I know an Australian and a Scot who work in the oil biz who moved here on TWP's which have/will convert into PNP. And the bars downtown popular with the oil crowd are full of folk from Aberdeen and elsewhere.

Perhaps, worth some further investigation then?

Being the wife of a Scot who is here in Newfoundland on a TWP hoping to get PR (as AX mentioned!), will do my best to answer any question I can about the process, AX has pretty much covered what's happening in the industry.

Atlantic Canada is definitely the place to look.

http://www.680news.com/news/business/article.jsp?c
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortu...8467/index.htm