The prospect of drawing even a handful of private-sector IT jobs to P.E.I. has the government willing to offer an attractive deal that includes anteing up cash to pay for a good chunk of the salaries.
PureSCM, an information and communication technologies firm based in British Columbia, is expanding to Charlottetown.
Warren McCall, president and CEO of the relatively small and young company, says incentives from the province played a part in the company's decision to expand here.
Innovation P.E.I. assisted in setting up a recruiting company to hire employees to work in Charlottetown for PureSCM.
McCall said the province will also pay about one-third of the salaries for the first three years for at least five employees and possibly 10.
If the company manages to fulfil its immediate plans of creating five new jobs here in Charlottetown, the investment from the province will be about $120,000 over the next three years.
"The incentives aren't huge but they certainly are useful,'' said McCall.
Innovation and Advanced Learning Minister Allan Campbell describes the government's financial incentives as sound business.
"The labour rebate is a back-end program,'' said Campbell. "They (PureSCM) have to create the jobs and the people have to be employed (to qualify for government money). So right there, I mean, that's good investment.''
McCall said his company has been receiving resumes over the past couple of weeks but have so far only hired one person, who will serve as managing director for the Charlottetown operation.
The company is looking to hire consultants and software developers who will earn between $60,000 and $100,000. Islanders are not yet lining up for the good-paying jobs.
"So far we have not been seeing an influx of resumes from P.E.I.,'' said McCall.
"We would love to hire some people locally ... but I think we may need to relocate a number of people (to P.E.I.) to start until people get to know who we are. A lot of IT people, especially if they are good, they are not going to apply to a company they have never heard of before. So I think we need to make a presence and that will help move things along.''
The company is still looking for a location to set up shop in Charlottetown.
PureSCM has been in operation since 2002 and has grown to a modest workforce of about 40.
McCall hopes to use Charlottetown as a base to launch his company into the eastern parts of Canada and the United States.
The key to growing the Island-based component of the company, thus creating more jobs here in P.E.I., is all about getting known, he stresses.
"We have to establish the local contacts with the business community as well as the government so that we can actually get a foothold here from a contact point of view,'' he said.
"So we would like to see a number of clients in P.E.I. in short order.''
Campbell said one thing that sets this province apart from much of the competition when it comes to attracting IT companies is the ease of doing business in P.E.I.
