The unemployment rate in Canada has traditionally been higher than in Europe or the US for a number of reasons.

  • A higher proportion of seasonal industries.
  • We have had a higher proportion of our population in smaller, more isolated communities making jobs harder to match up with potential workers.
  • Manufacturing has always been a smaller proportion of our economy than more developed nations.

In addition, our policy of mass immigration has caused a labour glut for most of the past 40 years. And increasingly, it is becoming more difficult to describe exactly what “unemployment” actually is.

Several statistical methods of calculation are available in the US which put the current rates at 6%, the most commonly chosen method, up to as high as 20% using perhaps a more comprehensive measure. Statistics Canada puts our effective unemployment rate at 11% when labour force dropouts are included.

In Canada, we count anyone holding a part-time minimum wage job as employed.

However:

  • Are laid off engineers really “’employed” when making $20,000 a year part-time?
  • Are the self-employed really employed when they were previously making $90,000?
  • Should jobs paying below the poverty line be counted as real jobs?

Despite the increasing unaffordability of housing, the continued loss of high-quality jobs offshore and the loss of real wages to inflation, the government continues to boost immigration to record levels to keep the growth Ponzi scheme expanding. At the behest of developers, speculators and cheap labour employers immigration is now at all-time record highs.

The Issue of the Incredible Temporary Foreign Worker Program

These neglectful policies only lead to higher levels of structural unemployment and under-employment. Immigration policy should be tailored to current realities and realistic prospects rather than anchored to the fantasy of growth forever which dominated our country 100 years ago.

High rates of un- and under-employment and misemployment create long-term social and economic problems and contribute heavily to structural deficits. A low growth, high-quality employment strategy would make the best use of our most valuable resource (people) and lower the rate of unemployment while increasing the level of productivity, salaries and wages.