Heather Wright/The Independent

Lambton County councillors have given the green light for the Sarnia-Lambton Economic Partnership to lead an immigration program to help fill gaps in the local labour market.

SLEP was part of a regional program using the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program which pinpoint holes in the local labour market and filled them with immigrants. SLEP has already applied to be in this year’s program and was looking for an endorsement from Lambton County council at its July 2 meeting.

“This program is not designed to support positions that can be accommodated with the regions existing labour force, nor can positions be filled for below market value,” wrote SLEP CEO Matthew Slotwinski in a letter to county council asking for an endorsement.

Slotwinski says 200 local needs were identified last year.

But Sarnia City/County Councillor Bill Dennis believes the program simply isn’t necessary.

“I find it highly unlikely that we cannot find someone, in a country of 40 million people, that can fill these positions. I find it myself, and a lot of Canadians (find it), very, very frustrating that we always have to turn and look for new Canadians to fill these roles that can be filled with our own citizens.”

Dennis says the temporary foreign worker program is “a complete mess” and is “abused” resulting in young people being shut out of the job market with “record unemployment.

“We should be putting our citizens first,” said Dennis.

The Sarnia councillor did not provide examples for his assertions.

The Sarnia-Lambton Workforce Development Board’s latest available unemployment rate is 8.5 per cent in April, up by more than a half a percentage point from the previous year.

The highest unemployment rate in Sarnia was 13 per cent in the 1990s which, according to Statistics Canada, was the result of a major regional economic recession and widespread manufacturing and industrial layoffs. More recently, the unemployment rate was 10.7 per cent in August 2025.

Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley spoke in favour of the program saying it meets employers’ needs. “Employers said this works for them and it gives them the special skills that they need, and it also grows the population here, which we all support,” he said.

Lambton Shores Deputy Mayor Dan Sageman agreed. “At the base level, we’re all immigrants, and, as an employer, I find it increasingly difficult to find folks that want to do certain types of work, certain types of working conditions, and it’s very hard to find employees in a rural environment,” says Sageman.

Dennis doubled down on his opinion stating; “This is disgraceful, quite honestly, disgraceful that we are bringing in foreign nationals to do the work of Canadians…the people that (are) in favour of a project like this belong to a particular party that doesn’t seem to care about the everyday working people in Canada.”

“When this meeting is over,” Sageman said, replying to Dennis, “I’m going to go out in this 36 degree heat, and I’m going to work as a construction labourer and build a house for a customer, and I take offence to that comment.

“I am a regular, everyday working Canadian who operates a construction business, and I support this program,” he said before councillors voted 14-1 to give the county’s support to the project.