Op-Eds
Statistics Canada’s latest jobs report, released on Friday, paints a picture of an economy struggling to adapt to the collapse in commodity prices. Fully 2,300 jobs were lost, but the headline-grabbing number was the 7.3 per cent unemployment rate — the highest since March 2013. The sobering labour market performance will almost certainly fuel demands for the federal government to include boosts for the economy in next week’s budget. But to assess how the government can best provide support, one needs to look beyond the unemployment rate, which only tells part of the story.
The unemployment rate comprises both a numerator and a denominator. Without getting too deep into the weeds, the numerator tells us how many people…
The brunt of Canada’s economic woes is falling on a few resource-based provinces. This avalanche of lost employment – Alberta lost 10,000 jobs in January – calls for a close look at our employment-insurance system, which maintains regional inequities by treating some workers much more generously than others.
As the first layer of Canada’s social safety net, EI gives recently laid-off workers some income stability and acts as an economic stabilizer. Do enough of these workers obtain access to benefits? For the most part, yes, but coverage could still improve.
EI eligibility is broadly misunderstood, which generates a fragmented, unruly policy discussion on how to improve the program. Confusion reigns partly…
What’s the bad-news Canadian economic story of 2015? The collapse in oil prices is hammering activity in the West. Even worse is how retrenchment in the oil patch, which had boosted national business investment after the 2008-09 slump, is revealing woefully weak capital spending elsewhere in the country.
In a modern economy, prosperity depends vitally on capital spending by businesses. When Canadian businesses invest in plants and equipment, they equip workers with technology that makes them more productive, and, ultimately, better paid. The bad news is that even outside the oil patch – including in Central Canada, which we need to lead the way in this lower-energy-price environment – investment per worker is anemic and has been…
The recent settlements between teachers and the Ontario government raised teachers’ salaries and left existing pension arrangements in place. But with education spending the second largest part of provincial spending, and teacher salaries the central part of the education budget, are we getting good value for money?
Paying teachers well attracts good people to teaching. That’s important. There are a number of international studies that suggest that when teachers are paid more, students perform better on international assessments.
But across the six largest Canadian provinces, the provinces where teachers earn more are not the ones with better…
By Andrew Parkin
How can Canada get the skills boost it needs to stay competitive? For many, the answer lies in pressuring our colleges and universities to do more to ensure that graduates are equipped with the skills employers need. A closer look at the evidence on adult literacy in Canada shows that our most pressing skills gaps lie elsewhere.
Canadians have grown accustomed to hearing that their provincially run education systems are among the best in the world. That’s why Canada’s less-than-stellar scores in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) 2013 study of adult literacy was so jarring. It seems logical to expect high achievement in education to translate into high performance on skills…
