Why are more people unemployed in Toronto than Quebec?

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There are more unemployed people in Toronto than in all of Quebec.

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When that stat was passed my way the other day, I was dismissive and thought it was someone on social media making things up.

Turns out it is 100% accurate and the reasons behind it are disturbing.

As first reported by Better Dwelling, an online housing media outlet, Toronto had 317,200 people unemployed last month compared to Quebec’s 244,200. The latest jobs report from Statistics Canada puts Toronto’s unemployment rate at 7.9%, well ahead of the national rate of 6.2% and definitely well ahead of Quebec’s provincial rate of 5.1%.

Now, to put that in perspective, StatsCan doesn’t just measure Toronto proper in these statistics but rather the wider Toronto area, which in these measurements doesn’t include Oshawa or Hamilton.

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The working population aged 15 and over in Toronto is listed at 6 million compared to 7.4 million for the entire province of Quebec.

Toronto’s unemployment rate is normally higher than the national or provincial average, so the fact that it is higher isn’t shocking. It’s the numbers in the StatsCan tables that should give everyone pause for concern.

Over the past year, Toronto has gone from 231,100 people unemployed and an unemployment rate of 5.9% to 317,200 out of work and 7.9%. The working age population of the area also went up by 273,000, mostly due to immigration.

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Statistics Canada has been warning for nearly a year that as a country our population growth, driven by immigration, was outpacing population growth — but the Trudeau government has ignored those warnings. Last August, Stats Canada pointed out that Canada’s population aged 15 and over had been growing by an average of 81,000 per month, outstripping job growth.

“Given this pace of population growth, employment growth of approximately 50,000 per month is required for the employment rate to remain constant,” StatsCan said.

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We didn’t hit an average of 50,000 jobs a month last year and are well below that level in 2024, even as the population keeps growing and the government increases the number of temporary foreign workers and international students who are given work permits.

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Earlier this week, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said he was “quite tired of the fact that people are always blaming immigrants for absolutely everything.”

He should talk to his own boss who had this to say a couple of months ago.

“Over the past few years, we’ve seen a massive spike in temporary immigration, whether it’s temporary foreign workers or whether it’s international students, in particular, that have grown at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at the beginning of April.

Trudeau even went on to say this flood of new people was helping drive down wages in some sectors of the economy.

The temporary workforce used to be less than 3% of Canada’s total population, now it’s over 7%, and the Trudeau government has promised to bring it down to 5% over the next few years. They haven’t started to move on that, instead they are going in the opposite direction.

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Our population is up roughly 600,000 people or 1.5% over the last six months alone and the Trudeau government shows no sign of slowing things down.

They have announced automatic permanent residency for people coming to Canada as caregivers. They have extended work permits for international students and are doing the same for asylum seekers.

All of this will only add to Toronto’s rising unemployment.

That’s not blaming immigrants minister, that’s blaming your policies, which have lifted the checks and balances in the system, opened the flood gates and, in the words of your boss, allowed people in faster than we can absorb them.

It’s not fair to the people already in Toronto, including many immigrants, and it’s not fair to the people you are bringing here.

It’s time to get a handle on your file Minister Miller.

blilley@postmedia.com

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