Ontarians who want to believe the Ford Progressive Conservative government’s claim that things are just going gangbusters in the province will have to wait a while longer for that to be realized. Possibly a very long while, considering the prospects for the province. The most recent nail in Ontario’s economic coffin came last week, courtesy of the monthly Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey.
The Canada-wide numbers from January were pretty bad, with job losses of 25,000, largely with women between the ages of 25 to 54. All jobs lost were in the private sector, while the public sector actually increased by 13,000 despite the claims of several governments that they were downsizing. A shrinking private sector and a growing government sector, which has occurred for a number of years in Canada, is a recipe for disaster.
Another unfortunate aspect of last month’s national numbers was that significantly fewer people were looking for work. Fully 94,000 Canadians stopped looking for work, something called the “discouraged worker effect” in economics. As a result of this, the unemployment rate actually declined slightly, but this was not good news because the rate dropped only because so many people had given up looking for work in a difficult labour market.
Despite the dismal national numbers, Ontario’s were much worse. The province registered a loss of 67,000 jobs, partially offset by job growth in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador. The largest sectoral loser by far was manufacturing, which lost over 29,000 jobs, just under half of the total. This is not only very bad for Ontario but for Canada, as Ontario is the manufacturing heartland of the country. The manufacturing sector is key for any country, as it represents a source of innovation, good jobs and productivity, all of which Canada needs badly.
There is no doubt that tariffs imposed by the U.S. on various Canadian industries are having an impact, but all of our current economic problems were present in Ontario and Canada long before Trump was a factor. When first elected in 2018, Premier Doug Ford promised tax cuts, red tape reduction, better spending controls after more than a decade of provincial Liberal overspending, lower electricity costs and an internationally competitive climate for business. Other than a few boutique tax cuts, such as the reduction in the tax on gasoline and fees for license plate stickers, virtually none of this has come to pass.
As far as government spending goes, Ford has been even more of a big spender than Liberal Kathleen Wynne, who Ford called “reckless”. If Ford had continued the spending practices of Wynne, Ontario taxpayers would have saved $7 to $10 billion in 2025. And this overspending was taking place long before U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. A big chunk of this added spending went to subsidies to business, a sure way to waste valuable taxpayer dollars without doing anything good for the economy. Seems that Ford is the reckless one.
Ford and his PC colleagues keep talking about how Ontario is “open for business” and that they are “unleashing the economy,” yet the facts show the absolute opposite. Ontario’s GDP per capita, a measure of our standard of living, has been falling since 2000 relative to the rest of Canada with zero improvement in the almost eight years the Ford government has been in office. Our standard of living in the province has also been falling as compared to the U.S., with Ontario now being called the “sick man of North America” as our economy suffers from stagnant GDP, a high cost of living, low productivity, relatively high business and personal taxes and a severe housing crisis, among other things.
Yet instead of focussing on Ontario’s many problems, some recent media coverage has indicated that Ford has been working with Prime Minister Mark Carney to support the notion of an early federal election so that Carney can obtain a majority mandate to supposedly deal with “uncertain economic times.” It can’t be very encouraging to Ontarians and Canadians in general that two of the politicians most responsible for our current dismal economic circumstances are considering imposing even more costs and uncertainties on Canadians in the form of a federal election less than a year after the last one.
Carney does seem truly desperate to obtain a majority, which should worry all Canadians as he has behaved much like a dictator to date with only a minority mandate. Opposition parties are currently providing a much-needed check and balance on Liberal excesses, and this should continue in the best interests of Canada. Liberals were very quick to criticize Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre for incurring costs to taxpayers in a by-election in Alberta. A full federal election will of course mean much greater costs that are unnecessary so soon after the last federal election.
The moral of this story is that all Canadians should be paying much more attention to the facts rather than the boastful musings of politicians. Too many of our politicians are busying themselves with partisan claptrap while ignoring the very real and serious issues Ontario and Canada are facing. Blaming Trump for everything that’s wrong might be believed by some but has nothing to do with the truth. Fiddling while Canada burns is not an acceptable strategy, especially today when it is well within the power of our governments to make things better.
She has published numerous articles in journals, magazines & other media on issues such as free trade, finance, entrepreneurship & women business owners. Ms. Swift is a past President of the Empire Club of Canada, a former Director of the CD Howe Institute, the Canadian Youth Business Foundation, SOS Children’s Villages, past President of the International Small Business Congress and current Director of the Fraser Institute. She was cited in 2003 & 2012 as one of the most powerful women in Canada by the Women’s Executive Network & is a recipient of the Queen’s Silver & Gold Jubilee medals.
