To the Editor:
After last month's debacle at Statistics Canada over the official job numbers for July, observers might be forgiven for wondering if the most recent figures for August (published last Friday) are accurate. The once-proud agency, long suffering now under a government that doesn't much believe in data-based decision-making, could ill-afford another hit on its credibility.
But public reaction to the August labour market report quickly moved on to the substance of what it revealed - a struggling economy that simply isn't generating jobs. Instead of gaining some 10,000 new positions in the past month, as predicted, employment fell by some 11,000.
Despite regular monthly population growth, participation in the labour force continued to decline in August by another 0.1 per cent - meaning that another 21,000 people stopped looking for work. Some of those would have taken normal retirement. Many others just gave up their job search in frustration.
As a result, the August unemployment rate stayed flat at 7.0 per cent, while both the number and percentage of Canadians gainfully at work dropped yet again - more evidence that the economy is not producing jobs at a sufficient pace. Compared to the period in 2008 just before the recession, there are nearly 230,000 more jobless Canadians today.
Some private sector economists call this situation "shocking". Others says it's "dismal". Whatever the descriptor, it's not good. And the problem seems to be chronic. To paraphrase the Governor of the Bank of Canada, the Canadian job market is a "serial disappointment."
Looking back a full year, only a meagre 81,000 jobs have been created in this whole country through the past 12 months. More than 80 per cent of them are just part-time, meaning poorer job quality, lower wages and less security.
Most seriously, the largest job losses in August were in the private sector - some 112,000 of them, gone! That's the worst private sector job-loss record, ever. Public sector employment increased a bit, as did the numbers of people claiming to be self-employed. But good solid private sector jobs went up in smoke.
In the fall of each year, the Government of Canada publishes a mid-term "Fiscal and Economic Update". It's due in just a few weeks. Will the Harper government continue to show passive indifference and do nothing - behaving like a hapless spectator, paralyzed by ideology, incapable of influencing the course of events, content to watch jobs deteriorate and disappear? Or will they at least try to be more useful?
If they had the will and gumption, they could roll-back some of their excessive Employment Insurance payroll tax increases which are running up a multi-billion-dollar EI surplus and unnecessarily killing jobs in the process.
They could join the "Team Canada" trade missions, led by provincial Premiers, in a concerted effort to brand and sell more Canadian goods and services abroad.
They could develop a credible environmental framework for resource projects which would earn Canadian energy producers greater access to international markets at better prices.
They could tear down barriers to higher learning and skills, and strengthen homegrown Canadian science and innovation.
They could accelerate, instead of stalling, federal investments in truly transformative public infrastructure to help drive jobs, growth and productivity - as recommended by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Provinces, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge, the Canada West Foundation, the Canadian Council of Chief Executive Officers, the C. D. Howe Institute, and many more.
But don't hold your breath. This is not a government that lets human need, good advice or hard evidence get in the way of its ideology or partisanship.
Ralph Goodale, MP,
Wascana, SK.
