IN THE HOUSE ~ Question Period ~ on the government's "kijiji" economics

 

Mr. Speaker, it is true that western grain farmers have been abandoned by these Conservatives, just like workers have been abandoned.

Governments should use sound data to develop sound labour market policies. Instead, the Conservatives use information from Kijiji. They ignored warnings that the data they used was not accurate.

We actually have factual data from Statistics Canada and the PBO, and it is paid for by taxpayers.

Would they acknowledge that their data does not show what they claim and does not justify their regressive labour market policies that are only backed up by Kijiji?

 

Mr. Speaker, the PBO report is not inconsistent with what we have been saying. We agree that there is no general labour shortage across the country. If there were, wages would be rising faster than inflation, and that is simply not the case.

What is happening is that we have sectoral and geographic problems with our labour market. We need to make sure that we take steps so that employers can find skilled employees to fill those positions when they become open, and we need training programs in place, like the Canada job grant, so that people will be trained to take those jobs when they are needed.

 

Mr. Speaker, the problem is that they have lost 500,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector since they came to power. The Minister of Employment and Social Development admitted that he had no idea about the state of the labour market in Canada.

We are right to have serious concerns about the Minister of Finance's report on the labour market that was tabled at the same time as the 2014 budget. What information did the Minister of Finance use for his report? If the government has no idea what is going on, why should we trust it?

 

Mr. Speaker, as I said before, we have the best job growth of any country in the G7. Since July 2009, the pit of the economic recession, we have created over a million net new jobs.

I know the member is really concerned about manufacturing jobs in Ontario. Maybe he should have his NDP leader of the province stop supporting a Liberal leader who has the highest power rates in Ontario history.

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