How many job losses since March 15th?

[Austrian Economics]

I agree that infrastructure is the way to get things rolling again. Why pay people to do nothing when we should be slamming another rail line through the mountains and putting up some hydro dams. There’s been study’s done on this stuff already and it could pushed through in the name of national interest if we had a leader instead of a gopher popping his head out for more than once a day. Someone like Roosevelt in the Great Depression or Macdonald in laying the CPR is needed.

Just a few miles from us is a perfect spot for a dam (already studied) on the north Saskatchewan .............. maybe then I could get some of Bucket’s beloved irrigation moolah. 😉

Funded by what? The money tree at 23 Sussex?

Various provincial utilities have already done the hydro dam thing. Now they are stuck with white elephants producing power that has to be sold at a loss. You propose to do more of the same?

[ajl]

The new normal will have official unemployment between 10 -15% in the future with actual rates closer to 30%. Mega project will just make the bankruptcy of the country sooner because of the lack of demand for the product. Muskat Falls has bankrupted NewFoundland for example. We will have lot of cheap hydroelectric power once site C comes online to compliment our cheap nat gas power. Aging populations don't need stuff. I visited the Hover dam a couple of months ago. It was not envisioned as a depression era project and it came on line just as a big switch to electrification was underway so its success was largely coincidental. There are make work projects in AB already. The current largest one is the Heartland petrochemical plant at Fort Sask. It was conceived by Rachel Notley to deal with the problem of free propane which happens every year in June by turning propane into plastic. It is a consortium of Interpipeline and the Alberta Government. Maybe it will make single use shopping bags. It is bankrupting IPL shareholder. Obviously propane is not free during grain drying season in Noivember, December, January, and February.

[Hamloc]

I think there is no doubt that the level of immediate job loss will be hard to fathom. The question is how long will it take for the restaurant industry, the retail industry, the tourism industry, the airline industry to start to recover and how many businesses and jobs are permanently gone. The Cannibus industry in Canada is downsizing right now at a rapid rate as well. Will the unemployment rate settle out at 10%, 12% or higher very difficult to know. When things start to return to a semblance of normal will governments have any room for additional spending? Will a guaranteed minimum income be necessary and how will governments pay for it? Governing in the next year and beyond will be fraught with many questions and few answers and I fear few of our present leaders are up to the task. Having said that I certainly don't have the answers either except that I hope that in country manufacturing experiences a huge rennaissance!

[bucket]

I think there is no doubt that the level of immediate job loss will be hard to fathom. The question is how long will it take for the restaurant industry, the retail industry, the tourism industry, the airline industry to start to recover and how many businesses and jobs are permanently gone. The Cannibus industry in Canada is downsizing right now at a rapid rate as well. Will the unemployment rate settle out at 10%, 12% or higher very difficult to know. When things start to return to a semblance of normal will governments have any room for additional spending? Will a guaranteed minimum income be necessary and how will governments pay for it? Governing in the next year and beyond will be fraught with many questions and few answers and I fear few of our present leaders are up to the task. Having said that I certainly don't have the answers either except that I hope that in country manufacturing experiences a huge rennaissance!

A couple comments to the highlighting ...people will grow their own now....and the manufacturing renaissance will be in Quebec first....


50 billion to the airline industry in the US ...Canada will be forced to match or we no longer have a Canadian airline....not that I really care but the politicians do...easily 2 billion for canadian Airlines will be coming...to get people to spend there money elsewhere in the world on trips....whereas farmers spend their money here and are forgotten.

[canolacrazy]

yes, the perpetual money machine brought to you by the boy who said "the budget will balance itself."

$200 billion deficit this year, and that's before any "projects."

What could go wrong???

[15444]

Was reading article somewhere yesterday that said 2.8 million unemployed was equivalent to 15% and as bad as forecasters has predicted it would get when this all started.

Well numbers are at 3.2 million and likely higher when Stats Can releases official numbers on Thursday.

[chuckChuck]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-despite-the-biggest-deficit-since-the-second-world-war-canada-can/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-despite-the-biggest-deficit-since-the-second-world-war-canada-can/


Despite the biggest deficit since the Second World War, Canada can afford this crisis

John Ibbitson
Published 14 hours ago
Updated April 6, 2020

The close co-operation between the government of Justin Trudeau, seen here on March 29, 2020, and Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Ontario government is wondrous to behold.

In the space of a few long weeks, Canada has shifted from business-as-usual to a wartime economy, with the federal and provincial governments shutting down businesses and taking over direct control of many people’s wages, even as deficits head for levels not seen since the Second World War.

But here’s the good news: The debt that governments are piling on should be manageable, provided the new normal reverts to the old normal in a matter of months rather than years.

There will be bills to pay. But we should be able to pay them without sacrificing the quality of life of future generations.

That isn’t to understate the magnitude of what’s happened. The past few weeks roughly correspond to 1940, when Canada shifted suddenly from a peacetime economy trying to drag itself out of the Great Depression to a mobilizing wartime economy, with massive increases in government spending and government control.

“Our projected deficit this year, as a proportion of the size of government, will be roughly the same as the first full year of the war effort,” Drew ***an, a professor at University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and a former Ontario deputy minister, said in an interview. He has written a paper for the Munk Centre comparing the pandemic to the war

Then, as now, Ottawa massively increased spending as part of the war effort. The difference, we all hope, is that the Second World War lasted for six years, from Germany’s invasion of Poland in September, 1939, to Japan’s surrender in August, 1945.

Yet despite the massive deficits and debts that financed the war, Ottawa was back to running surpluses within two years of its end. “One might hope for something of the same turnaround,” Prof. ***an said.

A surge in economic activity once governments release us from this national quasi-quarantine should also bring revenues up and deficits quickly down, though Prof. ***an added that the federal government would need to continue spending as the economy transitioned back to normal.

That doesn’t change the fact that by the time this is all over “we will be looking at hundreds of billions of dollars in debt that we did not anticipate six weeks ago,” said Kevin Milligan, a professor of economics at University of British Columbia.

The good news is that federal and provincial governments are taking on this unexpected debt “at a time when we have some of the lowest interest rates we have ever seen,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist of the Bank of Montreal.

It costs only about a billion dollars to service $100-billion in debt. “That’s not a trivial amount, but it’s affordable,” Mr. Porter said.

And this economic shock has forced us all to confront realities that we were trying to avoid: One way or another, maybe sooner or maybe later, the Canadian economy needs to transition away from oil and gas to cleaner forms of energy, especially with oil prices so low it’s hard to make a living off them.

And as many have already pointed out, our aging society was going to force up the cost of health care, even before the pandemic arrived.

The difficult but essential task will be to sustain the economy as it recovers after the pandemic, while also bringing public-sector spending under control. Prof. Milligan fully supports the government’s emergency spending measures, such as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit and the Canada Emergency Wage Benefit.

But “the 'E’ part is the critical part to me," he said. "We cannot be paying $2,000 a month to anyone who checks a box forever.”

The best outcome would be a gradual ramping down of government spending and deficits as business and industries ramp up and life returns to normal.

We will also see the return of politics. Right now, opposing political parties are limiting their criticism of each other as governments struggle to respond to the greatest national emergency since the war. The close co-operation between the Justin Trudeau’s Liberal federal government and Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Ontario government is wondrous to behold.

But the day will come when politicians go back to wrangling over deficits and spending that are a tiny fraction of what we’re seeing now.

What a blessed day that will be.

[AC man]

Oh, it's going to get higher as the days go on. Business doesn't need the number of people they have employed. Most have a bunch of useless people doing nothing really useful. Watch some will be let go because of this.

The CO OP refinery strike comes to mind. When that is settled there will be a major cleansing within that work force. They would gladly take the pension and wage offer which is better than the alternative. When you get too greedy guess what “NO JOB”!!!!!

[the big wheel]

So id just like to ask what different would the conservatives do about this situation only for clarification?

Not isolate?
If yes isolate then?
Not help people that won’t have money for food?
Not provide funding to restart businesses?

The financial problem because if this event is actually smaller than the bigger picture financial problem that was occurring prior isn’t it? I mean if we were in good shape and had a better functioning system wouldn’t we be able to start up again much more enthusiastic?
Because as it stands loans upon loans will be needed to start us to get back to where we were right? And weren’t we in a mess because of loans? And I guess that depends what your occupation is? Will people be paid more fairly now that it’s an obvious lesson what’s important or will he execs sports athletes and actors fool us again as a society?

[bucket]

The CO OP refinery strike comes to mind. When that is settled there will be a major cleansing within that work force. They would gladly take the pension and wage offer which is better than the alternative. When you get too greedy guess what “NO JOB”!!!!!

Banda should be booted as well along with anyone involved in not being able to solve a labour dispute in a reasonable amount of time...ultimately falls on the upper management of both parties...

5 dollar WCS oil and some just flowing in like an artesian well because it is worthless ( the heavy stuff) ...billion dollar profits and these guys are cutting production when there is still harvest and seeding to get done???????

[15444]

Pretty sure John Ibbitson has been hitting the bottle hard these last few weeks. His conclusions work on the guarantee of a generation of near zero interest rate and the rehiring of the majority of the recently unemployed. I think he lives in a fantasy world and he eluded to as much during the past week's Sunday Scrum on CBC where he said people like him, a well-paid journalist, really can't relate to those suffering now with no income.

[chuckChuck]

Shouldnt we just look back at all the historical events that caused major disruptions for some of the answers to what is going to happen? World war 1, The 1918 spanish flu, the great depression, world war 2, and several of the financial crisis that came to pass? Many of these events caused massive disruption for much longer periods of time.

For those who think governments shouldn't increase spending during a crisis, history shows you are wrong.

Yes there is more pain to come and some things are going to fail. But Big Wheel is spot on when he asks what would the Cons do different? Almost all the leaders in the developed world are following a similar fiscal path in this crisis.