Latest stats another reason to miss Stephen Harper...

Jobs numbers aren't good, economy on life support.

The jobs report out Friday morning was nothing to brag about. According to the latest numbers from Statistics Canada the unemployment rate fell from 6.8% in December to 6.5%.

This isn’t because more people are working, it’s because 119,000 fewer people said they were open to work.

The unemployment rate dropped despite StatsCan saying that the country shed 25,000 jobs in January. We’ve been bragging lately about creating more jobs than the Americans over the past few months, that should stop now.

The U.S. currently has an unemployment rate of 4.4%, converted to our way of calculating and it’s still lower at 5.2%. Their new numbers should come out next week.

Even if they shed jobs, their unemployment rate will still be lower than ours.

Economy on life support…

This news comes out just days after a new report by Rosenberg Research titled Canadian Economy on Life Support. In the report, economist David Rosenberg notes that GDP per capita continues to fall, and overall GDP is growing at 1% annually at best.

Yes, the tariffs are hurting but Canada’s economy was on life support prior to Trump being re-elected and as Stephen Harper pointed out this week, we can’t blame all our troubles on the American president.

That was highlighted by the news that mining firm Glencore was abandoning plans for a $1 billion upgrade to their Horne smelting facility in Quebec due to a dispute over regulations. The company was not able to get certainty on how regulations would be applied and decided the investment wasn’t worth the risk.

We should all miss Stephen Harper…

Elections have consequences. Bad policies have consequences.

We are living with the many consequences that are the result of abandoning the Harper Conservatives in favour of the Trudeau and now Carney Liberals.

It was in April of 2014 when the New York Times profiled our country and declared we had the most affluent middle class.

The next year, the public had grown weary of all of Harper’s success and traded him in for a government led by Justin Trudeau. The results, higher unemployment, a massive increase in government spending, worse public services, a falling standard of living.

With this week marking the 20th anniversary of the Harper government being sworn in, see reflections of the day here, the former PM has been very much in the news. While his call for national unity in responding to the changes brought about by Trump’s tariffs and his changing of the global trading order are welcome, he said much more that should be listened to.

“The question for Canada is not how we feel about what the U.S. is doing, it is how will we adapt,” Harper said in his speech the other day.

Too often Harper pointed out, the troubles facing Canada are due to bad government policy and have nothing to do with Trump.

“The moment in history we now face can do one of two things. It can lead us to blame Donald Trump for all our ills and to make excuses for the failures of the last decade,” he said.

“Or it can lead us to finally, truly do what is necessary to attain our full potential as a country, to become more competitive at home and better connected in the world and to leave Canada the most secure, wealthiest and freest country on the planet.”

Mark Carney was elected on the promise to do what was needed to turn things around, to think big, act bigger and move at speeds not seen in generations.

He hasn’t done that.

Instead, what we have are a new bureaucracy for housing, a new bureaucracy for major projects, new payments to help people with the cost of groceries. Oh, and stalled trade talks with the United States, increased tariffs and a worsening relationship with Washington despite Trump liking Carney and Carney kissing up to the American president.

If you have the time, watch Harper’s full speech here and think about what we gave up in rejecting him and embracing the last decade of failure.