Editor:
In an Aug. 14 advertisement, Taseko Mines stated that the New Prosperity project will generate 71,000 jobs.
This number is so large that it cries out for either clarification or retraction.
For example, if we assume that a city has one-third as many full-time jobs as its population, this implies that New Prosperity would provide the basis for more economic activity than the cities of Prince George and Kamloops combined.
Their combined population is 163,000, and 163,000 divided by three would equal an estimated 54,000 full-time jobs.
Taseko’s Aug. 14 ad says there would be more than 1,000 workers during the construction phase, and its August 2011 New Prosperity project description (available on its website) says that there would be 550 permanent jobs. If you add 1,000 jobs for three years and 550 jobs for another 17 years you get 12,350 person years of direct employment and 37,050 person years of indirect employment, assuming three indirect jobs for every direct job. The sum of these two numbers is 49,400 total person years of employment.
Based on my educated guesses, it seems to me that when Taseko Mines says it will generate 71,000 jobs, it is being quite misleading. Taseko’s own project description says that New Prosperity would actually create 550 “permanent” direct jobs that would last about 20 years, after which we would be left with an environmental liability that would last for thousands of years.
Dear Taseko Mines, could you please clarify your claim that New Prosperity would generate 71,000 jobs?
Pat Teti
Williams Lake