Stay classy, NAFTA

Canada has lost 500,000 manufacturing jobs – most of them in Ontario – over the past decade, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce economists noted in one of three reports by major banks this week on the devastation in the manufacturing sector. As a share of the Canadian economy, manufacturing slumped to 12 per cent from 20 per cent, while in the U.S. it held roughly steady at about 12 per cent of gross domestic product. In 2001, Canada had a $20-billion trade surplus in the Ontario-based automotive industry; that has been transformed to a $12-billion deficit. The energy sector, by contrast, has climbed to a $59-billion surplus in 2011 from $38-billion in 2001.


- Shawn McCarthy, Canada’s growing divide in riches, published in the Globe and Mail, March 3rd 2012

Human Resources Minister quietly axes student job centres

Reprinted from the Globe and Mail,
By Gloria Galloway

The employment centres for students that have opened every spring for more than four decades in communities across Canada have been cancelled by the federal Human Resources department, which says it can offer the same services online.

The centres began as a Hire-a-Student pilot project in Moose Jaw, Sask. in 1968 and quickly spread to other regions. But the government says they have seen their attendance dwindle in recent years as increasing numbers of young people turn to their computers to find employment between April and September.