A Dryden city councillor is sounding the alarm bell about a pending shortage of labour in his city and across northwestern Ontario.

Ritch Noel says an immigration program is ending, and that will affect one particular sector especially.

“I’ll say that I know of three service outlets here in town that are going to be losing between 30 and 50 percent of their full-time workforce in the very near future,” Noel told Dryden city council at their open meeting Monday night.

He adds that eliminating the immigration program will not only affect local business, but the community as a whole.

“In addition to making close friends with some of them, these people we are about to lose aren’t just numbers represented on a graph.  They are real people.  Their children are going to school with our children, that are going to be just gone.”

Noel says the unfortunate thing is there is no-one to fill these jobs.