EDMONTON — Thursday marked one week since Alberta fully reopened and businesses reverted to full capacity.

Yet, several local employers are finding it difficult to hire new or rehire employees at pre-pandemic levels of employment.

“People are just not ready to come back to work right now,” Jimmy Shewchuk, owner of Say Uncle and Prairie Catering, told CTV News Edmonton.

Business has returned, some workers have not.

“It’s been busy,” he shared. “It’s been good. People have been dining out and enjoying happy hours.

“What we’ve found is most of the restaurants out there had to double or triple their staffing needs and it was all happening at the same time,” Shewchuk added. “It’s been a challenge.”

According to Shewchuk, many people have felt anxious about returning to work.

“People’s comfort levels are very different right now,” he shared.

“(My team) is pushed to their limits of what they can do. We’ve been lucky that people have been pulling extra shifts, working tons of hours to help us get through everything.”. 

GREATER DESIRE FOR WORK FROM HOME OR HYBRID JOBS

Jessica Culo, who has worked in recruitment in Edmonton for 16 years, said she’s never seen such a shortage.

“We have seen a definite increase in the challenges of hiring talent. That would be for both permanent roles as well as contract roles,” Culo said.

“Candidates are really looking for the right opportunity,” she added.

According to Culo, who is president of Express Employment Professionals Edmonton, the city hasn’t had so many jobs to fill in 10 years. 

From her experience, a wide array of factors are affecting hesitancy for workers returning to work, including the time of year, COVID-19 anxiety, government assistance, and a lack of childcare.

One of the biggest factors has been workers wanting to work from home or a hybrid job.

“Candidates increasingly want a hybrid model or option,” she said. “There’s been a lot of silver linings from work from home.”

In Culo’s view, it could take time to get employment levels back to normal – even years. Alberta had an 8.7  per cent unemployment rate in May.

For Shewchuk, the difficulty of finding people to match positions has meant changing his expectations about experience levels.

“Start from scratch,” he said. “It’s hard to find experienced talent right now.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Ryan Harding

EDMONTON — Alberta reported 23 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday as the province reached a vaccination milestone. 

More than one-quarter of the population of each eligible age group has now received a second dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

More than 38,000 second doses of vaccine were given out Wednesday, bringing the per cent of eligible Albertans to be fully immunized up to 52 per cent. 

About 4,000 first doses were also administered, with 73.7 per cent of Albertans now having had a first dose.

Active cases fell to 697, about where they were in mid-July last year. 

The number of COVID-19 deaths remained at 2,307 after one death from November was reported but another was removed. The death was determined to be due to causes other than COVID-19. 

There are 133 coronavirus patients in hospital including 32 in intensive care units. 

The province reported a 0.88 per cent test positivity based on about 6,000 tests.

The next data update is scheduled for Friday.

EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Jason Kenney shuffled his cabinet Thursday, naming new ministers for transportation and culture but keeping major portfolios unaffected.

“There needs to be renewal every now and then in a government,” Kenney said.

“Not everyone in caucus can serve in a ministerial role.”

Leela Aheer, who had served as the minister of culture, multiculturalism and the status of women, now finds herself outside of cabinet after Thursday’s announcement.

Aheer called on Kenney to apologize following images of him and other ministers dining on a rooftop patio in apparent violation of COVID-19 protocols at the time.

Her former ministry has now been broken up and distributed to other departments.

Kenney rejected assertions that her demotion was a result of that criticism.

“It’s not about that or any particular incident,” he said. “There’s a lot of different factors that go into putting together the best collection of ministers.”

Lacombe-Ponoka MLA Ron Orr was named the minister of culture. Whitney Issik joins cabinet as minister for status of women.

Southern Alberta MLA Grant Hunter is also now out of cabinet, after being replaced as associate minister of red tape reduction by Tanya Fir, another Calgary MLA.

Fir was demoted from cabinet in the fall and was among the group of UCP staff and MLAs who drew public scorn last December by flying abroad in contravention of their own government’s health recommendations.

Ric McIver, who had been serving two roles since January when he took over municipal affairs following Tracy Allard’s resignation, will keep that file.

The other ministry he had been leading, transportation, will be taken over by Rajan Sawhney, former minister of community and social services.

Calgary-Foothills MLA Jason Luan will take over Sawhney’s old portfolio as a full minister after serving as as associate minister of mental health and addictions.

In his place, Kenney assigned Mike Ellis, MLA for Calgary-West.

High-profile cabinet members including Health Minister Tyler Shandro, Environment Minister Jason Nixon, Education Minister Adriana La Grange, and Finance Minister Travis Toews all remained in their roles.

OPPOSITION REACTION

The move comes as Kenney and his government both struggle with low poll numbers.

Former government MLAs Todd Loewen, who now sits as an independent, took aim at the premier increasing the size of cabinet from 22 to 26 ministers and associate ministers.

“Today he increased the size of government while forcing a chosen few to pay a political price for his own failures.”

Loewen accused Kenney of “putting his own short-term political interests first.”

“This shuffle has nothing to do with strengthening our province or helping Albertans. It was a crass attempt to buy the loyalty of disheartened and frustrated MLAs.”

Calling the shuffle a “missed opportunity,” Opposition Leader Rachel Notley said the shuffle does more to address the premier’s internal party problems than make needed changes.

“The real problem with this government remains at the very top,” she said. “He’s oblivious to the real problems of Alberta families and small businesses.”

NEW ASSOCIATE MINISTERS

Several new associate minister roles were also designated.

Nate Horner, MLA for Drumheller-Stettler, was to be sworn in as associate minister of rural economic development under the jobs and economy ministry.

Muhammad Yaseen, who previously served as parliamentary secretary of immigration, is to become the associate minister of immigration and multiculturalism. The Calgary-North MLA will work under the labour and immigration ministry’s Jason Copping.

Pam Livingston, who signed on as Kenney’s deputy chief of staff in February, was promoted to chief of staff.​ 

EDMONTON — A study conducted by Statistics Canada to find out how many Canadians have previously had COVID-19 showed that Alberta had the highest infection rate in the country in early 2021.

The study was the first to use a nationally representative sample to reflect the level of COVID-19 in the population with a blood sample.

The testing kits and survey were sent to 48,000 Canadians aged 1 and up, in all 10 provinces and three territories.

In the data collecting period of Nov. 2020 to April 2021, 3.6 per cent of Canadians had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in their blood. Of that, 2.6 per cent were from a past infection, 1 per cent was from a vaccination.

The rate of antibodies from a past infection were the highest in Alberta, at 4 per cent. Followed by Quebec (3.2%), Saskatchewan (2.9%), Ontario (2.5%), Manitoba (2.4%) and British Columbia (1.6%).

Alberta’s antibody rate jumped 1.6 percent when vaccinations are taken into account.

The study found that out of Canadians tested a larger portion of men had antibodies due to a past infection, while women were significantly more likely than men to have been vaccinated.

From the testing done on Canadian youth aged 1 to 19 the study found that 3.4 per cent had COVID-19 antibodies due to a past infection.

At the time of the study at least one vaccine was available for youth aged 16 to 19. The Pfizer vaccine for children aged 12 to 15 was not approved in time to be reflected in the research.

Visible minorities had a higher rate of antibodies due to infection than non-visible minorities in Canada, according to the study.

Out of all study participants one in three said they had never taken a COVID-19 nasal or throat swab test, with three out of four saying it was because they were asymptomatic.

The results of the study can be found on the StatCan website.

StatCan collaborated with Canada’s COVID-19 Immunity Task Force, Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada to administer the survey.

EDMONTON — One week after a century old historic church burned to the ground in Morinville – that community is turning its focus to the future.

The fire that destroyed St. Jean Baptiste Church happened early on June 30, fire investigators are still calling it “suspicious.”

“It’s a shame because now we’re back to the point where everyone can start going back regularly whenever we wanted and yeah, it’s not there anymore,” said congregation member Iain Watson.

Throughout the week church-goers walk past the destroyed building, reflecting on what it was and staring at what’s left.

“My folks are buried here, I got a brother buried here and sisters,” said Morinville resident Albert Dupuis. “It’s pretty hard to take, you know.”

While most of the 114-year-old historic resource is unrecognizable, three bells that once hung in the steeple remain.

“They were automatic I imagine, years back they had a guy with a rope ringing the bells,” said Dupuis.

“They rang at funerals, weddings, you heard them lots you know. They were part of the noise fabric of this town you could say,” said Philip Lavallee.

Lavallee played the rare Casavant pipe organ at the St. Jean Baptiste Church for more than 30 years.

“I don’t know if we’ll get back to having such a thing as a pipe organ. I don’t know. The thing was almost 100 years old,” said Lavallee.

Though the organ was lost, parish leaders are forming committee to rebuild the church and they intend to incorporate the original front doors and the three bells.

“It won’t be the same, but it’ll be part of our history still right? So it’ll be nice to hear,” said Watson.

It will likely be years before the bells ring again, but the church’s absence has already taken a toll.

“You know it’s not just about religion of course, it’s just what it means for Morinville and kind of synonymous as a landmark or icon for our community,” said Morinville Mayor Barry Turner.

“I hope they can rebuild it, but not like it was I don’t imagine,” said Dupuis.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson.