Check These Numbers

These are numbers Elections Canada might want to look into. Employment numbers were going up while the economy was slowing in the months running up to the federal election and then in the report only days after the vote, job numbers go the other way.

There were declines both provincially and nationally. The country lost 1,800. Saskatchewan lost 300 jobs in October after an increase of nearly 3,000 a month earlier.

This comes on the heels of previous monthly gains of 54,000 and 81,000 nationally. And the decline last month caught analysts off guard…they had been expecting to see gains in October.

It’s also interesting to see how StatsCan reports these figures. Gains are in the headlines but the agency drops any numbers in its overview when it the results are negative.

It’s also not a stranger to politicization, having taken a very public stand against the Harper government’s decision to end the long version Census form and the Liberals reinstated it. Whether it injected itself in the election campaign through its handling of job numbers or was ordered to do it by an activist PMO is probably something worth examining.