Roundup: The jobs numbers are in

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It was jobs day at Statistics Canada yesterday, and the June figures showed that there was a big recovery in part-time employment, largely in accommodation and food services, as well as retail trade – signs that the economy is starting to open back up across the country, and this was before we had any re-opening in Ontario, showing that there is still definitely room to grow. There were also more people looking for work, which meant the unemployment rate was a little higher than it might have been otherwise.

Of course, this was entirely being spun in entirely disingenuous ways by Pierre Poilievre, who has made an artform of lying with statistics. He called a press conference to decry that there was still a loss in full-time employment (never mind that full-time employment has held far steadier during the pandemic than part-time work, particularly because a lot of that part-time works is in the service industry that couldn’t operate during the mockdown/lockdowns). He decried the unemployment figure, but deliberately ignored that every country calculates their rate differently, and didn’t mention that if we calculated our rate the way the Americans do, there is a marginal difference between them.

But more to the point, he has spent the past couple of months trying to build this narrative that a job recovery projection in the budget was a promise to have fully restored the million jobs lost from the start of the pandemic by this point. Never mind that we had a third wave that was far deeper and longer than could have been anticipated when those projections were made (and you can thank murderclown premiers for reopening too soon before the second wave had subsided, and then waited too long to impose new measures once again), or that projections are not really promises. Yes, there is still more work to do in order to recover the employment we had pre-pandemic and to do the work of removing barriers so that women and minorities can better participate. But there’s no need to lie with statistics to make a point or as a means of trying to hold the government to account for its actions (or inaction) during this pandemic.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau was in Surrey, BC, to announce new public transit projects yesterday.
  • The government will be holding two emergency national summits on antisemitism and Islamophobia on July 21stand 22nd respectively.
  • Maclean’s has a weekend longread about the current state of trying to combat the culture of impunity that leads to sexual misconduct in the military.
  • New AFN national chief RoseAnne Archibald is pledging to make the organisation more transparent and inclusive, while holding the government’s feet to the fire.
  • Archibald is also not commenting on an investigation into allegations of bullying, but she has hinted that they were reprisals for her speaking out about the AFN.
  • We have been assured that Mary Simon will be moving into Rideau Hall, which Julie Payette refused to actually do.
  • More from the internecine warfare with in the Green Party, where some are saying they’d support Annamie Paul if she takes ownership of Jenica Atwin’s defection.
  • Andrew Leach notes that the Jasons Kenney of the past would be in uproar over the latest Sturgeon Refinery boondoggle, and he would be correct.
  • My weekend column looks at the demands that people are making for Mary Simon to “burn it all down” from the inside, and why that’s the wrong expectation to have.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1413537889623945226

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One thought on “Roundup: The jobs numbers are in”

  1. I’m sure the cons would have plenty to complain about Trudeau wearing the blame for job losses if they end up losing their seats. Annamie Paul will be looking for a new line of work sooner rather than later, and she’ll no doubt say that getting fired by her own party is because Trudeau is a racist communist antisemite who doesn’t like strong women. Wait, that’s Pierre Pigeon’s narrative. Maybe Doug Kenney and Jason Ford will lose their jobs *provincially*, and then Singh can point fingers at Trudeau about that too. As the hardscrabble working-class hero pulls up to the unemployment line in his Beemer or bespoke bicycle. Fuddle duddle that Trudeau, he took are jerbs!

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