The past few years have brought about changes for many individuals and that includes economic development officers.

A number of communities in Western Manitoba have people dedicated to economic development.

Wallace Woodworth EDO Tiffany Cameron says things are always changing but a lot has happened to prompt changes since 2020.

“We all found ourselves quite busy. I found myself during the pandemic trying to reach out to the community as much as possible to build new committees and projects to take on in the future.”

“I have two strong groups going with one in Elkhorn and the other in Kenton that are taking on projects and getting information out to the communities. It gave everyone a chance to breathe but it gives us a chance to make our communities better.”

Cameron is pleased to see how eager people are to get back down to work at making their communities a better place to live. One challenge facing most communities is finding enough people to fill any available jobs.

“Labour has kind of risen to the top. When I started in economic development is was more about job creation and bringing new businesses and new assessment and now, I think we have to look at ways of maintaining what we have and dealing with incremental growth based on what we can provide with staffing levels for new businesses.”

“Job shortages are pretty much across the board. We’re hearing a lot right now about health care and that being a priority with communities. It’s across the board in retail and agriculture just trying to find the workers to fill jobs,” said Tiffany Cameron.