Dear Editor
The latest U.S. jobs report showed Americans added 173,000 jobs in August and pushed the U.S. unemployment rate down to 5.1 per cent, its lowest level since March 2008.
Meanwhile, Statistics Canada reported our economy gained only 12,000 net jobs (0.1 per cent) in August. Since the U.S. jobs market is 9.2 times greater than Canada’s, then, comparatively, Canada should have produced 18,800 new jobs in August. Since January 2015, Canada’s unemployment rate has increased from 6.6 to 7.0 per cent, clearly trending in the wrong direction.
Obviously, Canada’s jobs market is weak and is in need of a jumpstart, as these divergent jobs reports demonstrate.
Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, has recently promised an additional $60 billion infrastructure investment over the next 10 years. As an immediate down payment to kick-start growth, Mr. Trudeau has promised an immediate doubling of current federal infrastructure spending in each of the next two fiscal years to $10 billion from $5 billion, or a total of an additional $10 billion.
According to the Political Economy Research Institute in the U.S., “Infrastructure investment is a highly effective engine of job creation.” Applying this analysis to the Liberal Party’s economic infrastructure plan over the course of the next two fiscal years, 180,000 new jobs could be created in Canada. Indeed, a jump-start to our economy.
Bob Jacobs, New Westminster
