Popular Victoria restaurants go dark for the weekend amid staff shortage

Vancouver -

All three of the restaurants at the Strathcona Hotel in downtown Victoria were closed this weekend due to a staffing shortage.

Signs on the door and posts on social media indicated that the Sticky Wicket Pub and the hotel's other venues would be closed from Friday, Aug. 27 through Sunday, Aug. 29, with reopening expected on Monday.

According to the BC Restaurant and Foodservice Association, the weekend closure comes as no surprise.

Cooks and servers are shying away from the industry due to the financial uncertainty brought on by COVID-19-related restrictions and closures over the last 18 months, according to the association.

"A lot of people, during the pandemic, rethought their lifestyle," said Ian Tostenson, the association's president.

"We're going to have to fairly quickly establish a different set of operating protocols when it comes to our staff," he added.

Restaurants aren't the only businesses in the hospitality industry that have been struggling to hire enough staff. That means there are a lot of opportunities available for the few workers who are looking for jobs in the industry.

Part of the solution, according to Tostenson, is to recruit more foreign workers.

"We're going to need immigration," he said. "People can't roll their eyes at this. We just don't have enough people."

Tostenson said the current process for bringing in skilled foreign workers is a lengthy one.

"We need to accelerate that program because it takes six months to get a skilled foreign worker, but two months of that is convincing the federal government that we don't have enough Canadians to do the job."

With files from CTV News Vancouver Island's Eric Lloyd