Think Donald Trump would be bad for Ontario’s economy? Look at what Doug Ford has already done
Dec. 11, 2024
We do know with statistical certainty that Ontario is already facing serious economic bumps today – not from Donald Trump’s tariffs but Doug Ford’s fecklessness, Martin Regg Cohn writes.
By Martin Regg Cohn Political Columnist
Doug Ford is braced for the worst from Donald Trump’s looming tariffs, but consider a more bracing reality.
What if Ford is his own — and Ontario’s — worst economic enemy? What if, instead of the incoming U.S. president, it is the long-serving Ontario premier who is the problem?
No one knows with any certainty whether Trump will impose his threatened 25 per cent tariffs.
But we do know with statistical certainty that Ontario is already facing serious economic bumps today — not from Trump’s tariffs but Ford’s fecklessness.
Unemployment in Ontario continues its relentless climb, leaving the province an outlier — exceeded nationally only by Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. The news is not good, the outlook is not encouraging:
The rate jumped almost a full percentage point from 6.8 per cent to 7.6 per cent last month, according to the latest Statistics Canada data. That puts the province in pandemic territory, rather than a recovery trajectory.
In fact, if you exclude peak COVID, you’d have to go back a full decade to find unemployment at such high levels, as StatCan observed in an accompanying commentary. Back in 2014, Kathleen Wynne won her first election as the province’s Liberal premier and presided over a decline in unemployment to 5.6 per cent through 2018, when Ford won power.
Which means that, far from helming the roaring economic engine of Canada, the premier is presiding over a period of decline. And has become a drag on the country.
“The decline in November was concentrated in Ontario, where manufacturing employment fell by 20,000 (-2.5%),” the non-partisan agency noted pointedly.
During Wynne’s time as premier, the manufacturing sector increased by about 18,400 jobs. In the past 12 months under Ford, Ontario has lost nearly twice that many manufacturing jobs (33,000), the figures show.
Meanwhile, the overall unemployment rate is declining or flatlining in neighbouring provinces with large economies. Unemployment is a comparatively healthy 5.9 per cent in neighbouring Quebec and 5.8 per cent in Manitoba.
Let’s admit, however, the limitations of having fun with numbers, no matter how unfunny. Let us not forget the old adage, in economics as in politics, that there are three kinds of lies:
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
By that measure, Ford is an expert practitioner of all three. For as long as he has been premier and even before, he has pilloried his opponents as economic charlatans and portrayed himself as a prudent steward of the province’s industrial heartland.
Not a day goes by that he doesn’t proclaim this truism to be self-evidently true — without any evidence beyond a statistical sleight of hand and a rhetorical trick. As for those annoying economic indicators, Ford insists they are merely a reflection of robust immigration numbers leading to more people chasing jobs.
Unfortunately for him, Statistics Canada notes that while the labour force rose by 0.4 per cent in November, it was “offsetting a similar-sized decline in October” — in other words, a wash — while the unemployment rate jumped.
To put this in perspective, Ontario’s unemployment rate has soared by a full 1.5 percentage points over the past 12 months. Against that backdrop, our premier is not only unprepared but unrepentant:
“We are the envy of North America, we’re the envy of the world,” Ford boasted lustily in the legislature.
“You wonder why President-elect Trump wants to put tariffs? Because we’re a threat to the U.S., because we’re a manufacturing powerhouse. We created more manufacturing jobs last year than all 50 U.S. states combined.”
Never mind that the independent statistical agency says we’ve been losing those manufacturing jobs over the past year. That’s an awfully bad baseline to boast about, before any Trump tariffs add more fuel to the fires of unemployment.
To his credit, Ford has recently been relatively restrained about bilateral boasting and domestic dissing. When America’s president-elect publicly trolls Justin Trudeau, the premier rallies to the defence of the prime minister and downplays Trump’s puerile mockery as merely humorous musings.
But it’s fair to say that Ford got carried away with his own hyperbole this week by claiming that Trump’s threats are proof he’s feeling threatened. As illogical as those tariff threats might be in terms of economic theories of trade and comparative advantage, they have their own inexorable logic.
Given how intertwined our supply chains are, the tariffs may be empty threats that never come to pass, but we will still pay a price. For there is method to Trump’s madness, because the more he imperils our trade horizons, the more he discourages future foreign or domestic investment in the manufacturing sector.
Even if Trump pulls back from his doomsday tariff scenarios, he still wins the day because future investors will be more inclined to locate their plants on the American side of the border to avoid future angst. Brace for the economy to get worse in 2025, but remember that all was not well in 2024.
What ever future tariffs Trump has in store for us, remember how we got to where we are today. For unemployment keeps rising inexorably, courtesy of Ontario’s incumbent premier, not America’s incoming president.
Dec. 11, 2024
We do know with statistical certainty that Ontario is already facing serious economic bumps today – not from Donald Trump’s tariffs but Doug Ford’s fecklessness, Martin Regg Cohn writes.
By Martin Regg Cohn Political Columnist
Doug Ford is braced for the worst from Donald Trump’s looming tariffs, but consider a more bracing reality.
What if Ford is his own — and Ontario’s — worst economic enemy? What if, instead of the incoming U.S. president, it is the long-serving Ontario premier who is the problem?
No one knows with any certainty whether Trump will impose his threatened 25 per cent tariffs.
But we do know with statistical certainty that Ontario is already facing serious economic bumps today — not from Trump’s tariffs but Ford’s fecklessness.
Unemployment in Ontario continues its relentless climb, leaving the province an outlier — exceeded nationally only by Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. The news is not good, the outlook is not encouraging:
The rate jumped almost a full percentage point from 6.8 per cent to 7.6 per cent last month, according to the latest Statistics Canada data. That puts the province in pandemic territory, rather than a recovery trajectory.
In fact, if you exclude peak COVID, you’d have to go back a full decade to find unemployment at such high levels, as StatCan observed in an accompanying commentary. Back in 2014, Kathleen Wynne won her first election as the province’s Liberal premier and presided over a decline in unemployment to 5.6 per cent through 2018, when Ford won power.
Which means that, far from helming the roaring economic engine of Canada, the premier is presiding over a period of decline. And has become a drag on the country.
“The decline in November was concentrated in Ontario, where manufacturing employment fell by 20,000 (-2.5%),” the non-partisan agency noted pointedly.
During Wynne’s time as premier, the manufacturing sector increased by about 18,400 jobs. In the past 12 months under Ford, Ontario has lost nearly twice that many manufacturing jobs (33,000), the figures show.
Meanwhile, the overall unemployment rate is declining or flatlining in neighbouring provinces with large economies. Unemployment is a comparatively healthy 5.9 per cent in neighbouring Quebec and 5.8 per cent in Manitoba.
Let’s admit, however, the limitations of having fun with numbers, no matter how unfunny. Let us not forget the old adage, in economics as in politics, that there are three kinds of lies:
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
By that measure, Ford is an expert practitioner of all three. For as long as he has been premier and even before, he has pilloried his opponents as economic charlatans and portrayed himself as a prudent steward of the province’s industrial heartland.
Not a day goes by that he doesn’t proclaim this truism to be self-evidently true — without any evidence beyond a statistical sleight of hand and a rhetorical trick. As for those annoying economic indicators, Ford insists they are merely a reflection of robust immigration numbers leading to more people chasing jobs.
Unfortunately for him, Statistics Canada notes that while the labour force rose by 0.4 per cent in November, it was “offsetting a similar-sized decline in October” — in other words, a wash — while the unemployment rate jumped.
To put this in perspective, Ontario’s unemployment rate has soared by a full 1.5 percentage points over the past 12 months. Against that backdrop, our premier is not only unprepared but unrepentant:
“We are the envy of North America, we’re the envy of the world,” Ford boasted lustily in the legislature.
“You wonder why President-elect Trump wants to put tariffs? Because we’re a threat to the U.S., because we’re a manufacturing powerhouse. We created more manufacturing jobs last year than all 50 U.S. states combined.”
Never mind that the independent statistical agency says we’ve been losing those manufacturing jobs over the past year. That’s an awfully bad baseline to boast about, before any Trump tariffs add more fuel to the fires of unemployment.
To his credit, Ford has recently been relatively restrained about bilateral boasting and domestic dissing. When America’s president-elect publicly trolls Justin Trudeau, the premier rallies to the defence of the prime minister and downplays Trump’s puerile mockery as merely humorous musings.
But it’s fair to say that Ford got carried away with his own hyperbole this week by claiming that Trump’s threats are proof he’s feeling threatened. As illogical as those tariff threats might be in terms of economic theories of trade and comparative advantage, they have their own inexorable logic.
Given how intertwined our supply chains are, the tariffs may be empty threats that never come to pass, but we will still pay a price. For there is method to Trump’s madness, because the more he imperils our trade horizons, the more he discourages future foreign or domestic investment in the manufacturing sector.
Even if Trump pulls back from his doomsday tariff scenarios, he still wins the day because future investors will be more inclined to locate their plants on the American side of the border to avoid future angst. Brace for the economy to get worse in 2025, but remember that all was not well in 2024.
What ever future tariffs Trump has in store for us, remember how we got to where we are today. For unemployment keeps rising inexorably, courtesy of Ontario’s incumbent premier, not America’s incoming president.
