A construction contractor for Husky Energy’s multi-billion-dollar Sunrise tar sands/oil sands project, 60 kilometres northeast of Fort McMurray, Alberta, is hiring unqualified foreign workers who are putting site safety at risk, according to at least three Canadian-born workers contacted by CBC Vancouver’s Go Public segment. “The errors on that site are repetitive and consistent,” said Ryan Slade, a journeyman electrician who joined Husky in 2013 as an onsite quality control inspector. “Mistakes [are] made over and over.” In one instance, a foreign worker tried to defrost a propane tank with a blowtorch, before others on the site intervened and averted disaster. The overseas employees were brought in under a temporary foreign worker program that had already come under fire for displacing Canadians in search of jobs.
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