SURETTE: Harper could still hang on, even after defacing Canada

http://thechronicleherald.ca     ralph Surette    May 16, 2014

           Three little-tent parties suit Stephen Harper just fine, because small, dirty and divided is his game, writes Ralph Surette. (ADRIAN WYLD / CP)

Watching Stephen Harper envenom not only the politics of the day but hammer at our deepest societal framework — the rule of law, democratic process — is to wonder what will be left of our self-respect as a nation if he wins the next election, thanks to a splintered electorate.

Once the light of the world on many fronts, Canada is now denounced regularly on environment, foreign aid and other things. Germany’s Bertelsmann Foundation, which rates governments every three years, has Canada slipping fast in “good government” ratings. Of the “high-quality governance structures” Canada once had in place, it said in its most recent report, “the actions of the Canadian government . . . have jeopardized this situation.”

Harper is a genius at totalitarian-style manipulation that feeds on the divisions that it has itself created, and at keeping the public confused. The fact that his party is still in the game at all according to the polls, despite one anti-democratic binge after another, attests to that.

Despite everything, he comes out with only a few light scratches over his scandalous attack on Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin on a trumped-up accusation.

This is not just a nasty spat. The Harperists have been attacking the courts from Day 1, and their problem is not with this or that judge — it is with the rule of law itself. The PMO’s reported fury at a string of setbacks suffered at the hands of the Supreme Court tells us ever more clearly that the Conservatives see the law as their plaything, to be bent to their purposes.

Harper is a clear-headed ideologue — all the more dangerous for that. Having bragged to the effect that “you won’t recognize Canada after I’m through with it,” his stated goal is to destroy the Liberal party and turn his own into the “natural governing party.”

The time for natural governing parties is probably over, but he can take some satisfaction in the reduced state of the Liberal party. The Harperists’ one telling argument is that Justin Trudeau “is not ready for prime time.” As regularly as Harper assaults democracy, Trudeau puts his foot in his mouth. And the recent signal given by its exclusion of pro-life candidates on the abortion issue is that the Liberal party is no longer a “big-tent” party. Three little-tent parties suit Harper fine, because small, dirty and divided is his game.

One would hope that by the time the next election rolls around in a year and a half, the game will be absolutely clear to the electorate. The idea of Harper in power another four years to rip up treaties, pervert the electoral process, pass manipulative omnibus bills, deepen the hold of oil and other resource companies over government, rig the tax system for partisan purposes, politicize the bureaucracy, plus attack environmentalists, scientists, civil society groups and parliamentary watchdogs, among others, should give us pause indeed.

Actually, many people get it now — the Harperists linger at some 20 per cent in the polls in Atlantic Canada and at 13 per cent in Quebec, raising the prospects of election night opening with fewer than a half dozen Conservative seats east of Ontario, and maybe none at all. The Prairies won’t budge much, despite some Conservative libertarians objecting to Harper’s iron grip, leaving Ontario and B.C. to decide. There, the Harperists are behind the Liberals, but not by much.

Harper’s argument there is that he’s going to heroically balance the budget and cut taxes. That is, he’s going to slash at everything, like services to veterans, and, especially, dump costs on the provinces. (Even the Parliamentary Budget Officer doesn’t know what exactly is being cut — that’s hidden in the last omnibus bill.)

With these savings, he’ll propose to cut taxes aimed at key voting groups in the money belts around Toronto and Vancouver that can be counted on to put self-interest above country.

If only Canadians saw what the outside sees. Once the light of the world on many fronts, Canada is now denounced regularly on environment, foreign aid and other things. Germany’s Bertelsmann Foundation, which rates governments every three years, has Canada slipping fast in “good government” ratings. Of the “high-quality governance structures” Canada once had in place, it said in its most recent report, “the actions of the Canadian government . . . have jeopardized this situation.”

Meanwhile, last November, with the media saturated with the Senate and Rob Ford scandals, Canadians heard nothing of the thrashing we got at the Warsaw Climate Change Conference, where several studies put us down with Saudi Arabia, which flares off oilfield gas, and a couple of others as one of the dirtiest nations on Earth per capita, thanks mostly to the tar sands.

Meanwhile, the opposition Liberals and NDP, which two-thirds of the electorate would like to see come together to put an end to Harper, instead are locked in their own frenzied combat, making it more likely that the Conservatives will slip through in those contested areas. And another Harper victory, even in a squeaky minority, would kill any chance that this country can retake its place as a positive force in the world.

Harper is a genius at totalitarian-style manipulation that feeds on the divisions that it has itself created, and at keeping the public confused. The fact that his party is still in the game at all according to the polls, despite one anti-democratic binge after another, attests to that.

About the Author

ralph Surette

Ralph Surette is a freelance journalist in Yarmouth County.

E-Mail: rsurette@herald.ca

More on Demographics, Demand, and Canada’s Falling Employment Rate

Posted by Jim Stanford May 11th, 2014   http://www.progressive-economics.ca

My post last week on the continuing decline in the employment rate in Canada (to below 61.5% in April, barely higher than the low point reached in the 2008-09 recession) has sparked some continuing discussion about the role of demographic change in explaining that decline (as opposed to a shortage of labour demand).

Is the decline in the employment rate due to weak labour market conditions, or is it due to the ageing of the workforce (as a result of which a larger share of the working age population consists of people in older age categories which normally have lower labour force participation and employment incidence)?

The answer, obviously, is “Both.”  The ageing of the Canadian workforce is a decades-old trend, it did not start in February 2008 (when the overall employment rate peaked at 63.8%).  Until then, the ageing of the workforce did not prevent the overall labour market from enjoying higher employment rates over time.  The downturn in the business cycle did start in 2008.  So it’s reasonable to conclude that this turn likely reflects cyclical (not structural) factors.

We can try to sort out the two forces at play by disaggregating the employment rate numbers by age category.  My methodology in analyzing the overall decline in the employment rate was to compare today’s rate to the pre-recession peak, and then estimate how much more employment would be required to get back to that pre-recession employment rate.  I interpreted that as a broad measure of the amount of new employment required to truly repair the damage from the recession.  That approach is certainly more reasonable than the argument made by the federal government that since absolute employment today is higher than it was before the recession, all the damage done by the recession has been repaired; this argument ignores 6 years of population growth which added over 2 million Canadians to the working age population.

Now let’s replicate my analysis, but disaggregating the employment rate data into broad age categories.  Young workers (15-24) have experienced the worst decline in employment incidence.  So-called “core” workers (25-54) have experienced a more modest decline.  Older workers (55 and over) have experienced a higher employment rate.  Whether this is good or bad depends on how many of these older workers are choosing to work longer for positive reasons, and how many have been compelled to stay in their jobs by reduced or less secure pension incomes.

The first part of this table shows that for the two under-55 categories, a total of 441,000 additional jobs would be required to rebuild the two under-55 employment rates back to their respective February 2008 levels.  That represents two-thirds of the total 665,000 missing jobs I had estimated on the basis of the analysis of the aggregate 15+ employment rate.  (Because of the shift-share phenomena discussed above, the total “missing” jobs does not equal the sum of the age category “missing” jobs.)  In other words, two-thirds of the deterioration in the overall employment rate since 2008 can be ascribed to the deterioration of employment incidence among under-55 workers — and hence can’t be directly attributed to demographic change.  Perhaps the rest of the 665,000 jobs could be attributed to demographic ageing, offset somewhat by the rising employment incidence among the 55+ category.

Another approach, that would more closely replicate the spirit of my aggregate analysis, would be to separately locate the peak employment rate experienced within each age category, rather than using the peak employment rate for the aggregate 15+ labour force (which was February 2008).  After all, if we’re going to disaggregate current employment performance by age group, we may well wish to also disaggregate the parallel task of measuring the extent to which current employment falls below peak (or potential) employment incidence.  This exercise is summarized in the lower part of the table.

The peak employment rate for the “core” 25-54 age group was attained in February 2008, so there is no difference for that group.  The peak employment rate for young workers was attained back in 1989 (the employment rate for young workers in 2008 was still almost 4 percentage points below that peak, reflecting both higher youth unemployment in 2008 than 1989 and lower labour force participation, presumably due mostly to higher participation in post-secondary education — although PSE enrollment itself partly reflects weak employment opportunities).  The peak employment rate for the over-55 group was attained in August last year; even in this group the employment rate has declined in recent months.

Comparing the actual employment rate to the historical peak rate within each category, leads to a combined estimate of “missing” jobs of 622,000 positions — almost all of which were borne by the two under-55 age groupings (since older workers are experiencing close-to-peak employment rates).  That’s not hugely different from the 665,000 missing-job estimate I derived on the basis of the overall population.  The takeaway from this analysis: Even adjusting for the ageing of Canada’s workforce, the economy would need a total of 622,000 more jobs to bring up the employment rate (for each age category of worker) to its potential (based on peak attained employment rates).

I certainly accept that demographic change is part of the story of Canada’s falling employment rate.  That being said, however, I think the following take-away conclusions are valid:

• The decline in the employment rate is due more to weak employment demand than to demographic change.

• The decline in the employment rate is clearly visible in young and core workers.
• Employment in Canada among workers under 55 is hundreds of thousands positions (from 441,000 to 618,000, depending on your choice of benchmark) below what it would be if previous peak balances between workers and jobs were re-attained today.
• And since the pre-recession benchmark was not itself a position of full employment, the true problem of underutilization of labour in Canada is even greater.

Labour force participation among under-55 workers has also declined significantly (this is not reported in the table), and so far in 2014 has averaged its lowest levels in both age groups (15-24 and 25-54) since 2002.  Overall labour force participation (among all people 15+) is at its lowest level since 2001.  So the decline in labour force participation (like the decline in the employment rate) is mostly due to factors other than demographics (presumably, weak labour demand).

The phenomenon of rising participation and employment among older workers is an important one that needs lots more analysis.  Indeed, it is trickling over into the decline in employment rates among the youth and core age groups.  In a demand-constrained labour market, younger workers always bear a disproportionate share of the burden of un- and underemployment (reflecting last-hired first-fired effects, etc.).  Therefore, while much of the decline in employment incidence among under-55 workers reflects weak overall labour demand, some of it also reflects a redistribution of employment from younger to older workers.  This is a perverse result for many economic and social reasons, and should lead us to question policies (like postponing the retirement age to 67, and other restrictions on early retirement) which are helping push up employment rates among older workers.

The Conservative economic record: 665,000 missing jobs

May 9, 2014 by PressProgress

Employers eliminated 30,900 full-time jobs last month and 25,600 Canadians left the labour force altogether, Statistics Canada job numbers released Friday show.

With an increase of just 2,000 part-time jobs for a net loss of 28,900 jobs, Erin Weir, an economist with United Steelworkers, puts the bad news in context.

“This large decline in employment coincided with an increase of 41,000 in Canada’s working-age population. The employment rate, the proportion of working-age Canadians who are employed or self-employed, fell to 61.5% – its lowest level since March 2010,” Weir said in a statement.

In other words, if the employment rate was back at its pre-recession peak (63.8%), Canada would have 665,000 more jobs today. “Damage of recession has not been repaired,” tweeted Jim Stanford, an economist with Unifor. 

Instead, Canada’s employment rate of 61.5% is now only 0.2 points above July 2009, the trough of the recession. “Employment rate has been steadily eroding since late 2012. Cda’s recovery has no engine, no momentum – thanks, austerity,” added Stanford.

Meanwhile, Douglas Porter, chief economist with the Bank of Montreal, told the Canadian Press that “there’s no question this was a bit of a disappointment. It continues a trend we’ve seen over the last six months of down then up, and up then down. So we’re seeing a see-saw action in Canadian employment.”

Here’s what that looks like, courtesy of Unifor:

CLC says April unemployment statistics still grim

OTTAWA ― New Statistics Canada unemployment figures for April are grim again and show the federal government has no solutions for the country’s more than one million unemployed, says the Canadian Labour Congress.

The Labour Force Survey for April 2014 released by statistics Canada showed the official unemployment rate was 6.9% in April, a number that shows no improvement over March.  What’s worse, the CLC says the rate of underemployment remained unacceptably high at 14.8%.

Canada’s 1.33 million unemployed can find no hope in these latest numbers and this government not only has no clue what to do, it doesn’t even have a clue what the real job vacancy rate is, the CLC says.

And the Congress echoed Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s call this week for better jobs data, saying that making huge decisions on Employment Insurance, training and economic policy on faulty, inadequate statistics has already been disastrous for Canada’s unemployed.

This is a very serious problem – the federal government doesn’t know how many job vacancies there are in Canada yet it is letting employers import over 330,000 migrant workers under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, according to the CLC.

Statistics Canada job market and other figures demonstrate that Canada has too many unemployed, too many migrant workers, too little accurate information and no government plan to fix any of it. That is a sad commentary on a government that likes to claim it knows what it’s doing but is actually in the dark.

Quick Analysis from CLC Senior Economist Angella MacEwen

There were 29,000 fewer jobs in April 2014 compared to the month before. The unemployment rate remained at 6.9% as fewer workers were participating in the labour force. Quebec suffered the largest job losses and Ontario gained a small number of jobs. All of the job losses were among employees, as the number of self-employed workers increased between March and April 2014. All of the jobs lost this month were full-time jobs. Year over year there has been a disproportionate increase in part-time employment, as half of the jobs added since last April were part-time.

The only group to make employment gains year over year (compared to April 2013) were workers over 55, mostly women. This is mostly due to population aging as employed workers move into the older age group. Young workers, and men and women 25-54 saw virtually no employment gains over last April.

The underemployment rate for April 2014 was 14.8%, and 28.8% for young workers between 15 and 24.

The Canadian Labour Congress, the national voice of the labour movement, represents 3.3 million Canadian workers. The CLC brings together Canada’s national and international unions along with the provincial and territorial federations of labour and 111 district labour councils.