Bring curtain down on this unsettling sequel

Explaining Canada’s superior employment rate

Donald Trump regularly makes outrageous claims. Fentanyl was pouring across the northern border from Canada and had to be stopped. Canada is nasty to deal with and has the highest tariffs in the world. Canada needs the U.S. but the U.S. doesn’t need Canada. Canadians want to become the 51st state. And so on.

In the latest trade dispute, after Mark Carney walked away from negotiations, Trump made a new claim that Canada’s unemployment rate was 10 per cent and climbing rapidly. Insofar as the unemployment rate is closely monitored, reported monthly, and given similar attention to the rates of inflation and economic growth, the comment was likely intended to signal Canada’s weakness. It fits Trump’s narrative that Canada needs the U.S. for its livelihood and protection and would be better off more directly under U.S. influence as a 51st state, or perhaps a protectorate like the Philippines or Panama in the past.

Fact checkers quickly reported that Canada’s unemployment rate is really 6.4 per cent for July, not 10 per cent, has fallen from 6.9 per cent in April, and is at its lowest rate since May 2024. Some astute observers pointed out that Canada’s method for the calculation of the unemployment rate leads to a higher rate than the U.S. by about one per cent. Under the American methodology, then, our unemployment rate would be 5.4 per cent, not that far off the U.S. July rate of 4.1 per cent.

Detection of unemployment is less straightforward that might appear, as it is sandwiched between the labour force statuses of employment and inactivity at a particular point in time. The internationally established standard for determination of unemployment is the notion of searching for work — you are unemployed if you do not have paid employment and you are looking for work without success. Surveys have been developed to categorize respondents as employed, unemployed or inactive, including the labour force survey (LFS) in Canada and the current population survey (CPS) in the U.S.

Kittie Wong

Kittie Wong wears three different hats for the Winnipeg Free Press editorial department: page designer, picture editor and web editor.

Canadian labour market still tight as economy sees slight bump in employment

OTTAWA - After sustaining three consecutive months of job losses and propelling fears of an economic slowdown, the Canadian economy posted a modest bump in employment in September, suggesting the labour market is still exceptionally tight.

The unemployment rate for the month fell to 5.2 per cent as fewer people looked for work, down from 5.4 per cent in August, Statistics Canada reported in its labour force survey released on Friday. Meanwhile,the economy added 21,000 jobs.

Economists say the latest jobs report shows employers are still eager to hire, and wages are growing accordingly.

The report showed wages were up by 5.2 per cent in September compared with a year ago, with the average hourly wage at $31.67. It marked the fourth straight month of five per cent or higher wage growth, but still falls short of the rate of inflation.

Smith’s pretzel logic confuses

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith had both sides of her mouth working overtime on Aug. 30, when she spoke at an event in Calgary to commemorate Alberta Day, the annual celebration of the province’s entry into Confederation in 1905 (officially Sept. 1, it was celebrated on the weekend).

Smith’s comments — and the things she did not say — revealed a lot about the political tightrope the premier is trying to walk over the challenges currently faced by her province. At the top of that list of challenges is a persistent campaign to separate Alberta from the aforementioned Confederation. A campaign that Smith appears to both support and oppose, depending on which day of the week it is.

Her Alberta Day remarks were an excellent case in point.

Smith has decided that on Oct. 19, Albertans will vote on a series of non-binding propositions in a province referendum. One of those questions will ask Albertans whether they want to hold a referendum on separation, thus making this fall’s vote a “referendum on whether to hold a referendum,” as some observers have dubbed it.

An opportunity to re-imagine downtown

The pandemic has been devastating for downtown Winnipeg. An abundance of “For Lease” signs in storefront windows has provided an intuitive glimpse, but a new report titled “State of Downtown: The impact of the pandemic to date” has quantified the profound challenges facing the economic, social and cultural heart of our city.

With the exodus of students and office workers, storefront businesses downtown have lost an average of $2 million per week in gross revenue since the pandemic began. This has led to more than 2,000 people losing their jobs and almost 50 storefront businesses permanently closing. The conference, hotel, hospitality, and arts and culture industries saw devastating declines, and more than 1.5 million square feet of office space are now vacant.

The pandemic has also exacerbated long-standing challenges of poverty and homelessness, with social agencies struggling to meet the needs of downtown’s vulnerable population.

The report paints a dire image, but we have been here before. Twenty years ago, downtown Winnipeg was in a similar situation. Population was at an all-time low as people moved to the suburbs, retail shops relocated from Portage Avenue to distant shopping malls, and office space was in decline. In the face of this challenge, government and private industry came together to rebuild downtown.

Boler sales and rentals happening as soon as they pop up

In January, Jorge Torres bought a Boler trailer — a little fiberglass egg on wheels — and brought it to his fiancée’s house to surprise her.

“The opposite of a good surprise is what she had,” laughs Torres, a 30-year-old contractor. “She says, ‘What is this garbage?’”

That garbage, Torres calmly explained, was a cult classic, a lightweight, ovoid escape pod first designed in Winnipeg in 1968, of which only 10,000 were manufactured, making it a valuable commodity and a retro, futuristic objet d’art with room for four sleepers. It was in pretty rough shape: scuffed up, beat up, used. It looked as though it needed a fresh coat of everything.

So to ease his fiancée’s worry, Torres, who had a rough year business-wise owing to the pandemic, found some images of refurbished models. “I’m telling you, I can fix it up and make it look really cool, even nicer than this,” he said, saying they could rent it out. There was a market, and a growing one at that, for camping and seeing the great outdoors after a year-plus spent indoors. She started to come around.