[Sylvanfan]

The company I work for does a lot of Oil sands projects (pretty much all our work from last year)...and we just had our busiest month here in November trying to get projects that had started in the summer competed. In January we're going to have to cut our staff from like 22 to 6 because there is no new work being done. Everything has been put on hold. Right now it's scary how fast this thing came to an end. Even then....we will likley have to go after other types of work and thats going to be hard to find too. This is the third bad downturn I've seen in the economy in my working life, but this one is the worst instant downturn yet by far. I'm about the second last guy on the layoff list...but come February good chance I'll be on EI if something doesn't turn around here. It's great depression like bad right now.

But I have to think that these companies will use this downturn to lean on contractors to get some better rates by threatening to do nothing. If they wait for the price to come back...they'll end up trying to get everything done when theres no labour to get it done again and will have to keep paying premium prices. They'd be smart to use this downturn to steady out their work flow and get contractor rates to a more reasonable level. Right now the cost of doing things is expensive, or had been.