Thursday, May 29, 2025
No Result
View All Result
  • Media
Support Us
Macdonald-Laurier Institute
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Economic Policy
      • Justice
      • Rights and Freedoms
      • Assisted Suicide (MAID)
      • Health Care
      • COVID-19
      • Gender Identity
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • AI, Technology and Innovation
      • Media and Telecoms
      • Housing
      • Immigration
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Competition Policy
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Israel-Hamas War
      • Ukraine
      • Taiwan
      • China
      • Europe and Russia
      • Indo-Pacific
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • North America
      • Foreign Interference
      • National Defence
      • National Security
      • Foreign Affairs
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • CNAPS (Center for North American Prosperity and Security)
    • The Promised Land
    • Voices that Inspire: The Macdonald-Laurier Vancouver Speaker Series
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada on top of the world
    • Justice Report Card
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Double Trouble
    • Digital Policy & Connectivity
    • Managing Indigenous Prosperity
    • Defending The Marketplace of Ideas
    • Reforming the University
    • Past Projects
      • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
      • The Transatlantic Program
      • COVID Misery Index
        • Provincial COVID Misery Index
        • Beyond Lockdown
        • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
      • Speak for Ourselves
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
      • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
        • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Inside Policy
  • Libraries
    • Columns
    • Commentary
    • Papers
    • Books
    • Video
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Economic Policy
      • Justice
      • Rights and Freedoms
      • Assisted Suicide (MAID)
      • Health Care
      • COVID-19
      • Gender Identity
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • AI, Technology and Innovation
      • Media and Telecoms
      • Housing
      • Immigration
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Competition Policy
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Israel-Hamas War
      • Ukraine
      • Taiwan
      • China
      • Europe and Russia
      • Indo-Pacific
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • North America
      • Foreign Interference
      • National Defence
      • National Security
      • Foreign Affairs
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • CNAPS (Center for North American Prosperity and Security)
    • The Promised Land
    • Voices that Inspire: The Macdonald-Laurier Vancouver Speaker Series
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada on top of the world
    • Justice Report Card
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Double Trouble
    • Digital Policy & Connectivity
    • Managing Indigenous Prosperity
    • Defending The Marketplace of Ideas
    • Reforming the University
    • Past Projects
      • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
      • The Transatlantic Program
      • COVID Misery Index
        • Provincial COVID Misery Index
        • Beyond Lockdown
        • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
      • Speak for Ourselves
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
      • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
        • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Inside Policy
  • Libraries
    • Columns
    • Commentary
    • Papers
    • Books
    • Video
No Result
View All Result
Macdonald-Laurier Institute

Ontario’s 50,000 job losses kick off Wynne’s anti-business backfire: Cross in National Post

February 16, 2018
in Latest News, Columns, In the Media, Philip Cross
Reading Time: 4 mins read
A A

Philip CrossThe job market has returned to earth with a thud, revealing that reports of Canada’s ‘booming’ economy were wildly overstated, writes Munk Senior Fellow Philip Cross in the National Post.

By Philip Cross, Feb. 13, 2018

The Canadian jobs market returned to earth with a thud in January, StatCan reported Friday, shedding 88,000 jobs in its worst month since the depths of the recession in 2009. The January drop shows that gushing reports about Canada’s “booming” economy were wildly overstated, ignoring that GDP has been struggling throughout the second half of 2017. GDP growth has slowed from an annual rate of five per cent to less than two per cent as persistent weakness in exports and business investment spread to the housing market.

Much of Ontario’s growth last year was just the sugar high of skyrocketing housing prices

Most commentators had wrongly interpreted buoyant employment as representing the underlying trend of the economy when in fact it was an anomaly. Jobs often are an outlier on StatCan’s increasingly cluttered dashboard of economic indicators because monthly employment estimates are volatile. The ease with which Canada’s commentariat was duped into believing the fable of a booming economy reflects its naiveté that more growth only requires higher doses of monetary and fiscal stimulus while ignoring growth’s long-term determinants such as rising business investment, innovation, productivity and competitiveness in world markets (in fact, excessive short-term stimulus subtracts from long-term potential growth).

Ontario led the retreat, losing 51,000 jobs. So does the jobs report bear out forecasts that a higher minimum wage would cost jobs? The most credible forecasts, which did indeed call for the loss of about 50,000 jobs, were done by the Ontario’s own Financial Accountability Office and the Bank of Canada, drawing on the consensus in the economics literature (rather than the cherry-picking of favourable left-wing research by Big Labour organizations). However, the forecasts predicted the full impact would take months or even years to play out. The industrial breakdown of job losses supports that the minimum wage played only a small role in January’s slump, since declines were concentrated in high-wage industries and not accommodation and food, which are the most affected by changes to the minimum wage. This is bad news for the Wynne government as it approaches an election in June since it suggests that employers will continue to adapt to soaring labour costs by trimming their workforce for months to come.

The underpinnings to the Ontario economy have looked increasingly shaky for some time. Despite an improving U.S. economy, exports of manufactured goods have languished all year. Much of Ontario’s growth last year was just the sugar high of skyrocketing Toronto housing prices. A recent CMHC report found that while the fundamentals of job and income growth accounted for 70 per cent of demand growth in Vancouver’s housing market, those fundamentals accounted for only 30 per cent of Toronto’s, suggesting that speculation was driving a lot of the growth. Now, speculative buying in Toronto’s housing market is being deflated by the tax on non-resident buyers and new lending restrictions that took effect January 1st, with Toronto house sales falling 22 per cent in January.

Meanwhile, Toronto’s huge financial sector is in turmoil as markets begin to contemplate a future of rising U.S. interest rates. Tax cuts and spending increases recently enacted in the U.S. mean stimulus is expanding rapidly in an economy nearing its capacity limits. The only way to avoid reigniting inflation is for the Federal Reserve Board to tighten monetary policy, a prospect that sent most financial markets reeling, replacing their euphoric reaction to the election triumph of the Republicans.

Ontario is not the only province where a wave of anti-business policies is stifling growth, and jobs in the rest of Canada fell by 37,000. Alberta is following Ontario’s foolhardy embrace of higher minimum wages, higher energy prices and more regulations. This was compounded by the failure of the Notley government to deliver its promised grand bargain that phasing out coal and imposing a carbon tax would appease the environmental movement’s implacable opposition to pipelines delivering output from the oilsands. In B.C., jobs growth has slowed to just 0.7 per cent since the election of an NDP government, from 4.2 per cent in the previous year. How Christy Clark’s Liberals lost an election with such strong job numbers is a mystery, but it’s one that appears about to be duplicated in Quebec where the best labour market in generations has not prevented the Liberal government from lagging badly in the polls behind the right-wing and anti-separatist Coalition Avenir Québec.

That separatist politics in Quebec appear to be historically low is yet a further setback for Ontario. The nation’s financial industry was once centred in Montreal, before the PQ was elected in 1976. And for decades, Ontario could attract large amounts of people and business by simply advertising that, unlike Quebec, it had no intention of ever separating from Canada. Now that huge advantage over Quebec is disappearing, even as the attraction of investing in the U.S. intensifies. Instead of adopting policies to boost Ontario’s competitiveness, the Wynne government deliberately antagonizes the business community at every opportunity. The inevitable results of such ill-considered tactics are becoming increasingly evident in investment, jobs and incomes.

Philip Cross is a Munk Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Tags: economyPhilip CrossOntariojobsKathleen Wynne

Related Posts

How organized crime operates in Canada: Sam Cooper and Peter Copeland for Inside Policy Talks
Domestic Policy

How organized crime operates in Canada: Sam Cooper and Peter Copeland for Inside Policy Talks

May 29, 2025
We’re on the verge of a new era for internal trade in Canada—if only the provinces can cooperate: Trevor Tombe in The Hub
Economic Policy

We’re on the verge of a new era for internal trade in Canada—if only the provinces can cooperate: Trevor Tombe in The Hub

May 29, 2025
Moving the needle: How “safe supply” became Canada’s answer to the opioid crisis, why it failed, and how we can do better
Health

Moving the needle: How “safe supply” became Canada’s answer to the opioid crisis, why it failed, and how we can do better

May 29, 2025
Next Post

PHOTOS and VIDEO: MLI's 2018 Canada-US Dinner

Newsletter Signup

  Thank you for Signing Up
  Please correct the marked field(s) below.
Email Address  *
1,true,6,Contact Email,2
First Name *
1,true,1,First Name,2
Last Name *
1,true,1,Last Name,2
*
*Required Fields

Follow us on

Macdonald-Laurier Institute

323 Chapel Street, Suite #300
Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 7Z2 Canada

613.482.8327

info@macdonaldlaurier.ca
MLI directory

Support Us

Support the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to help ensure that Canada is one of the best governed countries in the world. Click below to learn more or become a sponsor.

Support Us

  • Inside Policy Magazine
  • Annual Reports
  • Jobs
  • Privacy Policy

© 2023 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Economic Policy
      • Justice
      • Rights and Freedoms
      • Assisted Suicide (MAID)
      • Health Care
      • COVID-19
      • Gender Identity
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • AI, Technology and Innovation
      • Media and Telecoms
      • Housing
      • Immigration
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Competition Policy
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Israel-Hamas War
      • Ukraine
      • Taiwan
      • China
      • Europe and Russia
      • Indo-Pacific
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • North America
      • Foreign Interference
      • National Defence
      • National Security
      • Foreign Affairs
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • CNAPS (Center for North American Prosperity and Security)
    • The Promised Land
    • Voices that Inspire: The Macdonald-Laurier Vancouver Speaker Series
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada on top of the world
    • Justice Report Card
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Double Trouble
    • Digital Policy & Connectivity
    • Managing Indigenous Prosperity
    • Defending The Marketplace of Ideas
    • Reforming the University
    • Past Projects
      • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
      • The Transatlantic Program
      • COVID Misery Index
      • Speak for Ourselves
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
      • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Inside Policy
  • Libraries
    • Columns
    • Commentary
    • Papers
    • Books
    • Video

© 2023 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

Lightbox image placeholder

Previous Slide

Next Slide

Share

Facebook ShareTwitter ShareLinkedin SharePinterest ShareEmail Share

TwitterTwitter
Hide Tweet (admin)

Add this ID to the plugin's Hide Specific Tweets setting: