Premier’s job numbers don’t add up
According to Doug Ford, job creation is Job One.
Every chance he gets, the premier boasts about a boom in jobs for all. In the same breath, he badmouths the previous Liberal government for bad economic times.
There’s just one problem — an inconvenient inaccuracy and a faulty memory:
The numbers don’t add up. In fact, unemployment is up — higher than it was when he took over from his predecessor, Kathleen Wynne.
Under Ford, the unemployment rate reached 7.1 per cent in Ontario last month, significantly higher than the 5.6 per cent in 2018 when the Liberals were last in power — the lowest rate in a generation. Now, unemployment is climbing inexorably — inconveniently — at the very moment he is plotting an early election premised on his prudent economic stewardship.
With Ford’s Tories at the helm, Ontario’s unemployment rate of 7.1 per cent is far higher than in most other provinces, notably neighbouring Quebec (5.7 per cent) and Manitoba (5.8 per cent).
It gets worse in the big cities: Toronto’s unemployment rate has reached eight per cent; Windsor’s is worst of all at 9.2 per cent.
That bad news didn’t stop Ford from showing up in Windsor this week to crow about job-creation by his government.
“We’re expanding, I mean 100,000 estimated jobs in building construction alone,” Ford insisted.
In fact, there are 557,800 workers in construction today, compared to 531,300 when Ford took power in mid-2018 — a net increase of 26,500 jobs, according to Statistics Canada. That’s roughly a quarter of Ford’s exaggerated job-creation claim.
Then he pivoted to attack his political opponents.
“Remember, folks, six years ago the Liberals chased 300,000 jobs out of our province. Just think of that, 300,000.”
While it’s true that manufacturing took a hit across North America during the 2009 global recession, Ontario still ended up more than one million jobs ahead after 15 years of Liberal government from 2003-18.
During Wynne’s time as premier from early 2013 until mid-2018, the manufacturing sector increased by about 18,400 jobs; under Ford, that number has increased by 50,400 jobs. Comparatively and statistically speaking, in a province of 14.5 million people, that’s a wash.
The bottom line is that Ford is falling short of even his own expectations and projections. In its 2024 budget released last March, his government included an elegant chart showing that unemployment would henceforth dip well below Ontario’s “historical average” of 7.1 per cent over the last two decades of Liberal and PC rule.
Wrong again. In fact, unemployment has already increased to precisely that threshold, and is pointing in the wrong direction — trending up, not down.
To be fair, those ups and downs aren’t all Ford’s fault. Tough times can be tough luck for any provincial politician.
In reality, a premier has fewer fiscal levers than the federal government to move the needle. But that’s never stopped Ford from claiming credit in good times, while blaming everyone else in bad times.
Ford is at his most mischievous when he keeps demanding that the federal government lower interest rates, even though that’s the bailiwick of the Bank of Canada, which operates independently from political influence (as Ford knows full well). Every few months, the premier pens a performative letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pressuring him to meddle in monetary policy.
This week in Windsor, the premier couldn’t resist pressing both buttons — hyping the job numbers while hoping for help on interest rates.
“The Bank of Canada needs to double down on its own rate cuts,” the premier thundered. “It’s time for the Bank of Canada to get out of our way.”
That’s not how our central bank works. It neither takes direction from politicians nor gets in the way of their work — it merely does what it has to do, by divining economic trends and inflationary inputs.
All that said, there’s a third rail in Ontario politics that is derailing our economic engine in the pursuit of manufacturing investment. Buried
in Ford’s annual budget are hydro subsidies that have reached record levels — $7.3 billion this year alone to disguise the true cost of electricity from both voters and investors.
When the history is written about how Ford’s Tories managed the economy, the hydro subsidy hidden in plain sight will go down as the most unproductive, indefensible and unsustainable blunder. To the extent that the deficit is a drag on the economy, and curtails jobcreation, the true numbers tell the real story — not the political fables from Ford.
As the premier travels the province in anticipation of an early election next spring, his carefully curated news conferences serve as a dry run for the campaign stump speeches to come — as long as you don’t do the math. The wonder of it is that the opposition parties, so quick to scream corruption, haven’t cottoned on to his miscalculations or called him out on his mismanagement as yet.
Beware the statistical sleight of hand from a politician walking a tightrope, because at some point you lose your footing. Live by economic data, die by economic data.