Category: Economy

The Alward jobs record: Not good

AlwardHed
The record on job creation for New Brunswick Premier David Alward — fighting for re-election right now — has been rotten. (KRIS SIMS/Sun News Network)

Campaigning with Justin Trudeau on the weekend, New Brunswick Liberal Leader Brian Gallant told reporters, “The plan of David Alward and the Conservatives is not at all concrete. When you look at their record on job creation, since 2010 we’ve lost 3,900 jobs.”

Not true.

It’s actually much worse. The province has lost 4,800 jobs since 2010. (I’m assuming that when Gallant says “since 2010” he means, “since the September 2010 election that Alward won”) Continue reading The Alward jobs record: Not good

The Harper jobs record? Depends on how you slice it …

LFP

In our newspapers Monday, I write about Finance Minister Joe Oliver’s visits beginning Monday through southwestern Ontario, an area of the country that’s been particularly hard hit by job losses, mostly in the manufacturing sector. You can read the column here.

But here, in this post, is some more background on what I’ll call the “Harper Jobs Record” based on data from Statstics Canada monthly labour force survey.

Economists, traders, and investors prefer to work in increments of “last month”, and “last quarter” but for the purposes of this post I will work mostly in political increments, i.e. since “last election” or since “Harper took over”. That said, we will, like economists, traders, and investors, find common ground in using a 12-month comparison for some data. Continue reading The Harper jobs record? Depends on how you slice it …

Ahead of Ontario election, The final tale of the tape on job numbers

Statistics Canada was out this morning with the final jobs report before Ontarians head to the polls next Thursday.

Here, then, are some aggregate numbers on the Liberal record in office so far as jobs go. Choose which one you like to make your preferred political point: Continue reading Ahead of Ontario election, The final tale of the tape on job numbers

The Liberal record on job creation by industrial sector

Today on the Ontario campaign trail, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak was indicting the Liberal governments of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne for letting 300,000 manufacturing jobs disappear on their watch. Now, while I was critical of Hudak and the PCs earlier this week for vastly overstating the number of “out of work” Ontarians, Hudak is pretty much spot-on with this latest number. Since October, 2003, when McGuinty took the reigns for the first time, Ontario has, in fact, seen 314,500 manufacturing jobs disappear. That’s what Statistics Canada says.

I was curious which industrial sectors fared worst or better during the Liberal reign and so I crunched the numbers from Statscan for three time periods: Since the McGuinty liberals first won office in October 2003; since the last Ontario election in Oct 2011 (the McGuinty/Wynne years) and the last 12 months. The most recent month for which data is available is April 2014. Continue reading The Liberal record on job creation by industrial sector

The wonky math in Tim Hudak's new "I Want To Work" ad

This is the latest ad from the Ontario PC Party, which has built its campaign around what it calls its “Million Jobs Plan”. In short, Hudak believes that if Ontarians can leave the PCs in charge in government for the next eight years, the province will end up with 1 million more net new jobs. Western University economist Mike Moffatt has put that promise in context and, in his judgement, believes that that is an “ambitious — but not impossible — target.”

But in this new ad, Hudak is not talking about the million jobs he will create in 8 years. In this ad, he is standing in the legislature at Queen’s Park and and says: “There are 1 million people out of work.” Now I’m assuming that, as this is being released in the midst of an Ontario general election and he made that comment in the Ontario legislature, we ought to interpret what he said as there are 1 million Ontarians out of work. But that’s just not true. Continue reading The wonky math in Tim Hudak's new "I Want To Work" ad

Housing Bubble? Bunk!

Is the bursting of a housing bubble in Canada about to blow away the value of your home?
Bunk, says the Conference Board of Canada.
In a report to be released Monday, the Ottawa-based independent think tank says bubble fears are overblown.
That’s an important conclusion not only for homeowners in Canada but also for policy makers in Ottawa. Continue reading Housing Bubble? Bunk!

Jobs and politics: Devastating data for the incumbent in Quebec

For this tweet, CAQ Leader François Legault was cherry-picking one of the worst data points for Quebec in today’s monthly jobs report from Statistics Canada but he had lots to choose from. It was a very bleak report card for the PQ government of Premier Pauline Marois. The highlight? Statistics Canada found that, in the space of one month between January and February this year, 25,500 jobs disappeared in the province.   Continue reading Jobs and politics: Devastating data for the incumbent in Quebec

PBO: On austerity, size of the civil service, and computers

With just a few weeks to go until the end of Ottawa’s current fiscal year (March 31), the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s latest review of the government’s latest spending plan [pdf] concludes the federal government will spend about $259.9 billion this year or just 0.3% more than it spent in fiscal 2013.

And yet, the PBO believes that spending should have been higher as the government made, but did not follow through on, several spending commitments: Continue reading PBO: On austerity, size of the civil service, and computers