This past week, Cariboo-Prince George MP Todd Doherty wrote a letter to the editor attacking the federal Liberals on job creation and debt.
Mr. Doherty is proud of the Conservative record but I would ask if he has truly looked at that record.
Under the Liberals, from 2000 to 2006, the number of employed people in the labour force increased by 1,635,900 or 11.1 per cent. From 2006 to 2011, under the Conservatives, the increase was only 825,000 or five per cent and from 2011 to 2015 it was 725,600 or 4.2 per cent.
By themselves, these numbers are telling. However, consider these increases against the growth in the labour force (defined as the population over the age of 15 eligible to work and seeking employment).
The growth in jobs from 2000 to 2006 outstripped the change in the labour force (11.1 per cent versus 8.4 per cent). But from 2006 to 2011, the labour force increased by 6.9 per cent compared to the five per cent change in employment and from 2011 to 2015, those numbers are 4.9 per cent and 4.2 per cent.
In other words, when it comes to creating jobs, a Liberal government is much better than a Conservative government. Or put another way, the Liberals under Jean Chretien and Paul Martin created more jobs in six years than the Conservatives under Stephen Harper created in ten. Clearly whatever policies the Conservatives pursued for job creation, they didn't or don't work.
Does Mr. Doherty have a solid case when he bemoans the Liberal government's intentions to run deficits and add $113 billion to the national debt over five years? Maybe he would if the Conservatives had not just added over $157 billion to our national debt in their failed attempts to kick start the economy and stimulate job creation.
Yes, one can make the argument that the worldwide recession of 2008 hampered the Conservative government but the simple reality is our economic woes are not over.
Consider what the drop in the price of oil has done to our economy. Alberta is now a "have-not" province where the provincial minister of finance is chastising the federal government for not doing enough. Newfoundland and Saskatchewan has seen their oil revenue disappear. And the Conservative policies - both from the 1980s and the last decade - have seen our manufacturing capacity crippled. The Canada economy does not have the capacity to pick up the slack and buffer us against crashing commodity prices.
The last decade is not a record I would be proud of if I was a Conservative Member of Parliament. It is a record of sluggish growth and bad decision making. It is a record filled with tax breaks and concessions to the one per cent and little for the 99 per cent. It is a record which hasn't left taxpayers with more money in their pockets.
And perhaps this is the reason the Conservatives were so resoundingly defeated in last October's elections.
That said, I would contend the Liberal plan for deficit spending - while necessary - is not the direction we should be going as a country. This month marks the tenth anniversary of this column and I reread the very first one I wrote.
It started: "Education is the key. This is thought behind the work of noted economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Prosperity, economic diversity, capital expansion -- all depend upon education as the cornerstone."
"Not surprisingly, then, education has figured heavily in any survey of political priorities for Canadians. It ranks right up there with health. Indeed, the two issues trade back and forth as the number one and two concerns of Canadians polled."
I referenced to a column written by Bruce Strachan in which he argued we could learn much by looking at Ireland. At the time, their economy was sizzling and a lot of the credit was given to removing tuition fees from post-secondary education.
Although the Irish economy is no longer the Celtic tiger, it is not the only economy which has found an economic advantage in higher education. The post-secondary system in many countries is much more affordable and education is much more accessible. University tuition in Germany, for example, costs less than five per cent of the median wage for students.
In any case, over the last 20 years, we have not seen the investment in our educational infrastructure necessary to maintain our place in the world. Maybe more to the point, we have not seen the investment in funding education for our youth at a level necessary to allow us to compete in an increasingly flat world.
Mr. Doherty claims "Today we sit without a plan to create jobs" but I would argue governments at all levels need to wake up to economic reality. Gone are the days of low-skilled labour positions. Any job which can be outsourced will be. The global economy is changing.
A plan to create jobs needs every level of government to invest in education.
