For the last month, I’ve been hearing all about how Canada, even Ontario alone, is creating more jobs than the United States. This was held up as proof by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford that our economy is doing great despite Trump’s tariffs.
Look, I never want to talk down the Canadian economy, and by all measures it is more resilient than some expected when Trump first threatened the tariffs. That said, our economy is not doing well and it wasn’t in good shape before Trump was re-elected and started playing games with our trading relationship.
Canada needs fundamental changes in our economy, and despite promises in the last election by Mark Carney, we aren’t getting them.
About those jobs numbers though…
All last month, Doug Ford was bragging about Ontario “kicking the Americans butts” on jobs. He based this on the fact that Ontario created 52,000 jobs in July while the Americans lost jobs.
The Carney government has been boasting for months that we are creating more jobs and beating the Americans on jobs. They’re using similar faulty numbers that I will explain in a moment.
Today, Statistics Canada and the American Bureau of Labor Statistics released their jobs reports.
Canada lost 42,000 jobs in August.
The U.S. added 162,000 jobs in August.
Who is laughing now?
In reality, neither one should be laughing. Despite best efforts, StatsCan’s Labour Force Survey and the Employment Situation Summary from the BLS are notoriously unreliable, but they are the best we have at assessing the situation. Numbers can be, and are, revised well after the fact as the Americans did this morning with new numbers for June and July.
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised up by 11,000, from +20,000 to +31,000, and the change for July was revised up by 44,000, from -23,000 to +21,000. With these revisions, employment in June and July combined is 55,000 higher than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)
And StatsCan will sometimes go back and review a whole year.
As I said, imperfect, but the best we have.
Are we comparing apples and oranges…
My problem with Canadian politicians claiming we are doing better than the Americans on jobs is that it isn’t true. Claiming it is - and having our media parrot that without question - gives the false impression that things are just fine.
They’re not and we should be focused on fixing those economic fundamentals, not soothing ourselves.
Ford’s claim that Ontario alone thumped the U.S. failed to take into account that Ontario’s gain of 52,000 in July was all part-time jobs; the province actually lost full-time jobs that month. For August, StatsCan says Ontario added 3,200 full-time jobs but lost 21,000 part-time jobs for an overall loss of 18,000.
Context matters here.
As for Canada doing better than the United States overall, the base numbers don’t back that up.
Their national unemployment rate is 4.1%. As mentioned, the two countries measure differently but if we used the American measurements our national unemployment rate would still be 5.4% well above theirs.
So how can we claim we are doing better than them?
The reality is that we can’t but Carney and Ford get away with making the claim because for the media to challenge that and to fact-check them would be to admit the Americans are beating us at something. In today’s climate, saying anything positive about the United States appears to be verboten.
Uncomfortable truths…
Howard Lutnick is an easy man for Canadians to hate. He’s brash, he’s bombastic, he’s sometimes loose with the truth.
When he appeared on CNBC this week and said Canada’s economy is underperforming and that Ontario would be dead last if compared with American states, Canadians recoiled and got angry.
In reality, that’s because we are in denial.
If you ranked every province and state by the size of their economy, Ontario would be in the top ten at 9th place. Quebec would be next at 23rd, Alberta at 27th, British Columbia at 31st.
That, however, is the size of the total economy.
When ranking by GDP per capita, Ontario falls dramatically. Alberta is the highest ranking province in GDP per capita, Saskatchewan second.
Ranked against every other province and state, Ontario falls to 54th.
There are some who argue that we shouldn’t measure GDP per capita but rather PPP or purchasing power parity. I’m not one of those people, but even if we did, Canada overall and Ontario in particular, do not fare well.
So while Lutnick might be wrong on a detail or two here, on the overall issue, he is 100% correct.
We don’t have the right policies in place, we are getting in our own way too often.
I had breakfast with some business executives earlier this week, people trying to move big projects forward, the kind that would reverse these numbers. They tell me that despite the rhetoric, we still aren’t thinking big, acting bigger and moving at speeds not seen in generations.
We need to fix our own house…
Canada should be the richest, most prosperous country in the world. We have all the resources to be that. We have the people and skills to achieve that.
What we don’t have are the right policies.
There is a guy that has been arguing for a change in our policies to achieve what I just described, but sadly, voters keep rejecting him and his party.
There is the consolation that occasionally, that Mark Carney will steal policies from Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives, but they aren’t stealing enough of them or implementing them properly to get the results we deserve.
If we want to fix our weak position on the employment and jobs front, it might be time admit that Lutnick has a point, and start fixing the underlying, and weak, fundamentals of the Canadian economy.
In Canada, the news isn't what's happening. The news is whatever Carney and the liberals say the news is. And people just gobble it up, no questions asked.
What kind of country does everything in its power to undermine its own economy just to spite the leader of another? What kind of country believes every single lie they're being fed by their government and media over what they see and hear with their own eyes and ears?
What kind of country runs for the pitchforks every time they hear a criticism of their "Great Leader"? What kind of country has so little self-confidence that they prefer to throw insults over rational discussions?
Canadians demonstrate every single day how immature we are, how unprepared for the real world we are, how emotionally unstable we are. The political class knows this very well and takes advantage of our low information, gullible population.
The liberals created the mess we're in but they couldn't have done it without the help of millions of fearful, uninformed, emotional voters... Well done Elbows Up brigade. What's your next move?
"start fixing the underlying, and weak, fundamentals of the Canadian economy"
Agreed and that should start with tax reform. The biggest scam is paying taxes on the money we make, paying taxes on money we spend and taxes on things we own that we already paid taxes on with already taxed money.