Canada’s Economic Action Plan: Problems with the ‘Canada Jobs Grant’ ad go beyond the fact it doesn’t even exist (updated May 22, 2012)

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A big deal was made over the long weekend of the current government advertising a ‘Canada Jobs Grant’ program that not only doesn’t exist, but hasn’t even been developed.

Apparently the government has spent in excess of $100 Mill. to date on these ‘Economic Action Plan’ ads. Imagine how many jobs that could have created. This is the latest manifestation of the current federal government’s view of Canadian workers as lazy, dim-wits who just aren’t looking hard enough for all the jobs available. Cue up the cartoon unemployed Canadians looking despondent with question marks in their thought bubbles. So many things wrong on so many levels with the ad. Let’s just move on to what little content it presented.

1. Canada is facing a SKILLS SHORTAGE (that needed to be put in CAPS for you)

The funny thing is the caption is surrounded by ‘APPLY HERE’, ‘WANTED’, ‘NOW HIRING’ signs, to imply that the reason so many Canadians, especially young Canadians, remain unemployed 5 years after the recession began, is because of a lack of skills. Which is interesting, because by the government’s own questionable stats, it would appear the problem is a lack of jobs, not skills to fill them. Today’s (May 22, 2013) job vacancy report notes There were 6.4 unemployed people for every job vacancy, up from 5.9 one year earlier. The same report indicates the top industries by job vacancy rate were ‘Administrative and support, waste management and remediation services’ and ‘Arts, entertainment and recreation’ (both at 2.1%). ‘Health care and social assistance’, ‘Retail trade’ and ‘Accommodation and food services’ were reported as having the highest total number of job vacancies (34, 24 and 22 thousand, respectively). The nature of the jobs available is unspecified (the survey is by industry, not occupation), although one suspects many in the ‘Heallth care and socia assistance’ sector were in social assistance, to deal with the swelling ranks of Canadians turning to social assistance for lack of employment and lapsed EI benefits.

2. With baby-boomers retiring, there is a looming LABOUR SHORTAGE (in CAPS again)

As we and others have touched on already, the baby-boomers aren’t retiring en masse any time soon. Some have lost a significant portion of their nest egg in the market meltdown during the recession; many had never saved up enough to retire in the first place. The CPP (and QPP) funds suffered substantial losses during the recession, and the federal government increased the age for seniors to qualify for OAS/GIS. The federal government repealed the mandatory retirement exemption in the Canadian Human Rights Act, effective December 15, 2012. Boomers’ disincentive/inability/unwillingness to retire has been and will continue to be a major problem for Gen-X/Y, whose continued struggles in the labour market are beginning to manifest in other areas of the economy (housing, personal debt, consumer spending). The ‘looming’ labour shortage is at best hypothetical at this point, as the data simply doesn’t support it.

3. Workers and students DON’T KNOW about opportunities in high-demand fields (ditto CAPS)

You’ll notice the first job in that list is ‘Skilled Trades’. Construction, perhaps? No, because that industry is in for a rude awakening with the pending housing collapse. The referenced jobs vacancy report notes Construction had the highest number of unemployed people for every vacancy (14 to 1). The ‘Skilled Trades’ reference was likely to ‘opportunities’ in Alberta’s mine/tar pits. However, that same jobs vacancy report notes The job vacancy rate in mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction declined from 3.5% to 1.7% in the 12 months to February. And it’s not for lack of knowledge about those opportunities, so much as young Canadians simply not wanting to work in that field. While we don’t doubt there are unfilled opportunities for those with ‘Science, Technology, Engineering and Math’ skills, the proportion of the total Canadian labour market high-skill jobs account for is small. This may have something to do with the fact information and telecommunication technology has made it easier in recent years to off-shore high-skill jobs to lower-wage markets (notably India). At the same time, the same federal government’s immigration policy has encouraged Canadian employers to bypass the domestic labour market entirely when recruiting high-skilled workers. The last two points were emphatically highlighted in the recent RBC foreign worker fiasco.

4. In order to STAY COMPETITIVE employers must hire workers with the skills they need. If the skills shortage is not fixed [flag]‘s economy risks FALLING BEHIND (odd CAPS combo)

Perhaps an honest effort in developing a more innovative, productive and diversified economy, one less reliant on the export of dirt and dirt by-products as its main economic driver, and less resources committed to empty rhetoric and sloganeering, would be a better way to address lagging competitiveness.

Update (22/05/2013)

The jobs vacancy data in points 2 and 3 were updated with the May 22, 2013 release (providing three-month moving averages to February 2013)

Keystone XL and the environment: Focus on diluted bitumen’s dirty by-product, petroleum coke

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Pet-coke_pile_Detroit_River

A Black Mound of Canadian Oil Waste Is Rising Over Detroit
Ian Austen, The New York Times May 17, 2013

Credit to Oil Change International, the org that first brought this issue to the public spotlight some months ago with its report, Petroleum Coke: The Coal Hiding in the Tar Sands January 2013

Perhaps someone trained in the natural sciences can help decipher the following report from the good people at Texaco,

Phase Characterization of Unmodified Petroleum Coke and Coal Gasification Slags (PDF)
Mihi S. Najjar, Texaco Research Labs at Beacon; John C. Groen and James R. Craig, Department of Geological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University August 1991

To the untrained eye, it looks worrisome, especially Table 1 of the appendix (see toxicology and carcingonesis studies for Nickel Oxide and Vanadium Pentoxide from the National Toxicology Program at the NIH)

Texaco proposed this ‘solution’ to the petroleum coke pile problem two decades ago.

Petroleum coke utilization with the Texaco Gasification Process
Falsetti, J.S. and Skarbek, R.L.,Texaco Inc. January 1, 1993

The disposition of petroleum coke has become a problem for the modern high conversion refinery. Use of the fully commercial Texaco Gasification Process (TGP) to convert coke into high value hydrogen, power and steam is a cost-effective and an environmentally-superior solution to the coke disposition problem.

Interested readers can use the HS Code for petroleum coke (begins with 27) to see the volume and dollar value of Canadian export using the CIMT database.

Reference to bituminous and sub-bituminous coal in the HS codes shouldn’t to be confused with petroleum coke. As the Government of Alberta describes it:

The coal mined in Alberta is primarily bituminous or subbituminous …
Alberta’s coal reserves represent approximately 70 per cent of Canada’s total reserves …
Over two-thirds of the coal produced in Alberta is used as fuel for electricity generation in the province …
Sub-bituminous coal does not require processing or upgrading for use as a fuel for electricity generation in the province …
Coal has other uses. For example, gases, oil and tars extracted from coal can be used in the manufacture of products ranging from gasoline …

To sum up, Alberta burns most of its extracted coal to generate electricity/fuel to extract and process the remaining coal to diluted bitumen, which in turn is refined to low-grade synthetic crude oil, a by-product of which is petroleum coke, which can be processed into a low-grade coal.

If ever there was a clear case of economic inefficiency, that would be it. The unfortunate part is the waste generated at each stage of this incredibly inefficient process is toxic.

Keystone XL and the environment: Contrary to popular spin, IEA finds rail spills significantly less than pipeline

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We strongly suggested as much in a post last month, although the ratio of rail-to-pipeline incidents reported by the International Energy Agency (IEA) differs significantly from the U.S. National Response Centre (NRC) data we looked at.

Pipelines Spill Three Times as Much Oil as Trains, IEA Says
Eliot Caroom, Bloomberg News May 14, 2013

Pipelines in North America spilled three times as much crude oil as trains for comparative distances over an eight-year period, the International Energy Agency said today in a study it based on U.S. Department of Transportation data.

Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, would you care to comment?

2011 NHS: Community organizations officially left in the dark

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2011 NHS: data may not be released at all due to data quality, communities to lose vital data source
EconomicJustice.ca, December 6, 2012

Today’s first release of the 2011 National Household Survey (NHS) data confirmed what we had previously written. It appears the data quality was so poor that Statscan decided to release neither data at the dissemination area (DA) nor the census tract (CT) levels. These are more commonly referred to as ‘community-level’ data.

NHS Focus on Geography Series

2011 National Household Survey: Data tables

NHS User Guide > Chapter 6 – Data dissemination for NHS standard products

It’s unclear at this point whether the community-level data will be released at a later date, or only provided on a paid-access basis. Given the obviously problematic data quality, the latter would be ill-advised.

As an example, the small community that received the Statscan letter referenced in the December 6, 2012 post had a population of 65K in 2006. That community was swallowed up in amalgamation and is now part of a census subdivision (CSD) with a population of 1.6Mill. CSD was the lowest level geography provided in today’s 2011 NHS release. The non-response rate for that community’s CSD in the 2011 NHS was 21%. To put that in context, non-response in that community’s CSD was equivalent to 5 communities its size. From a statistical perspective, that community has effectively disappeared thanks to the cancellation of the long-form Census.

That was the biggest news from yesterday’s 2011 NHS release: all community-level data (both DA and CT) was suppressed due to data quality. That the media failed to report it is more than unfortunate. It’s a public disservice.

Editor’s Note:
For context, census tract data has been available since 1941, dissemination area data since 2001 (enumeration area data, the DA equivalent prior to 2001, dates back to 1961).

2011 NHS: A few questions for the first release

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Here are a few interesting questions we’d like to see answered. We’d be equally happy to see them even asked.

Methodology / data quality

1. How did Statscan manage to get the 2011 NHS response rate up over 2/3 when the 2011 Census 2B test of 2008 had a response rate of slightly less than 1/2?

2. a) What was the minimum number of questions completed before any manipulation (NRFU, CEFU, FEFU, E&I, etc) for which Statscan accepted a 2011 NHS questionnaire as complete?

b) Was the number and/or quality of responses deemed acceptable on a 2011 NHS questionnaire different from prior year Censuses (specifically 2006 and 2001)?

3. Will Statscan be releasing a per question response rate, similar to the 2011 Census 2B test of 2008 (if it hasn’t already)?

4. Were the data quality standards changed at the DA and CT levels (if immediately released) to reduce suppression given the circumstances, and what proportion of each were suppressed?

alternately: Will the DA and CT level data be released at some point (if not immediately released), and what proportion do you expect to be suppressed?

5. Statscan was unable to answer whether it would even release the community-level data at all as recently as six months ago. When was the decision made (not) to release it and how was that decision reached?

Aboriginal Peoples

1. a) Why/how did Statscan’s 2006 2B Census estimates indicate certain Aboriginal populations increase by 30%+ between 2001 and 2006 Censuses?

b) Were there possible response rate or methodological issues that contributed to this extraordinary jump in those Aboriginal populations?

2. If Aboriginal response rates were problematic even when the long-form was mandatory, how bad was it this time?

Immigration

1. a) Were first year immigrants, i.e. those who landed during the reference year 2010, included in the immigrant population count?

b) If so, why have those same first-year immigrants not previously been counted in the income statistics, and has anything been done to address this issue in the 2011 NHS?

Ethnic origin

1. Could you elaborate on the issue of whether/how example order in the Census/NHS survey questionnaire plays an impact on response rate for certain ethnic identities?

2. In particular, how has moving ‘Canadian’ up in the list of examples each year contributed to the increased ‘Canadian’ response, and was there any political input in the decision to move it up in the list over the years? * inquisitive readers may wish to request a copy of the April 2, 2008 release presentation, during which this question was first asked, to compare answers

3. How do you classify responses of ‘French Canadian’ or ‘Canadien(ne)s français(es)’, as French or as Canadian?

4. a) Why/how did Statscan’s 2006 2B Census estimates indicate certain Asian ethnic populations increased by 40%+ between 2001 and 2006 Censuses?

b) Were there possible response rate or methodological issues that contributed to this extraordinary jump in those Asian ethnic populations?

 

That should do for now. Will update if any other interesting questions for the first release come to mind.

 

Published May 8, 2013 7:35 AM