Thunder Bay — Canada shed 65,500–66,000 jobs in August, pushing unemployment to 7.1%—the highest since May 2016 outside the pandemic.
About 1.6 million Canadians were unemployed as participation dipped to 65.1% and the employment rate fell to 60.5%.
The heaviest losses hit professional, scientific & technical services (-26k), transportation & warehousing (-23k), and manufacturing (-19k), while construction added 17k jobs.
The Mark Carney Problem: Policy That Talks Big, Delivers Small
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Tariff shock, weak response. StatsCan explicitly flags tariff threats/impositions hitting Southern Ontario—especially autos and parts. Ontario lost 26,000 jobs in August as uncertainty choked hiring. Ottawa’s counter hasn’t insulated the auto corridor or supplier networks.
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Mixed signals on fiscal policy. The Carney Liberals are floating austerity while pledging large new priorities. That combo chills business confidence when firms already report weaker sales expectations and are pausing investment.
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Productivity slide, no credible plan. Labour productivity fell 1.0% in Q2, even as the economy contracted; business investment in machinery & equipment also fell. A durable growth agenda requires investment, competition, and innovation policy—still largely missing in action.
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Dependence on rate cuts as a crutch. Markets now lean toward a September BoC cut, but monetary policy can’t repair structural issues. With inflation at 1.7% (July), the door is open, yet relying on the Bank masks Ottawa’s policy drift.
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The Carney Liberals inherited a tough hand, but August’s labour data shows they haven’t stabilized the economy. Until Ottawa delivers a concrete, execution-ready plan on productivity, investment, and trade resilience, Northwestern Ontario should plan for a soft fall hiring season and push for region-specific growth tools.
What It Means for Thunder Bay & Northwestern Ontario
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Transport & warehousing losses matter here: Port logistics, trucking, and distribution are exposed to slower trade flows and tariff uncertainty.
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Manufacturing softness can ripple to local suppliers (rail/rolling stock components, equipment services).
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Professional services pullback (-26k nationally) hurts small firms—engineers, IT, and consultancies that service mining, forestry, and municipal projects.
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Ontario’s labour market: Employment -26,000 in August; jobless rate 7.7%. Local hiring plans could stay cautious until trade clarity returns.
Where the Government Is Falling Short (and What Would Help)
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Targeted auto/steel backstops: Fast relief for tariff-exposed exporters and tool-and-die SMEs along the GTHA–Windsor corridor, tied to domestic investment and job retention, not blanket subsidies.
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A real productivity agenda: Accelerated write-offs for machinery/automation, streamlined permitting, and pro-competition reforms urged by international reviewers. OECD
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Trade re-routing & infrastructure: Move beyond rhetoric—expedite east-west trade corridors that benefit the Port of Thunder Bay and Northern supply chains while U.S. access is volatile. Statistics Canada
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Skills & participation: With participation falling to 65.1%, scale up rapid training in logistics, construction, and skilled trades; tie funding to regional shortages. Statistics Canada
Poilievre’s take on unemployment: cut taxes, speed approvals, curb TFWs, and build more homes
Pierre Poilievre frames today’s higher joblessness as a policy-made slowdown: businesses are shelving investment because of high costs (notably the federal carbon price) and slow approvals that stall energy, mining and infrastructure projects.
The Conservative fix centers on “axe the tax” to lower operating costs, a fast-track national energy corridor, and a “one-and-done” permitting rule to greenlight major projects within a year—meant to spur hiring in construction, resources, logistics and manufacturing.
On the labour side, Poilievre argues labour-market slack is compounded by policy, pointing to record use of the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program, which he says undercuts entry-level wages and crowds out younger Canadians. He’s now pledged to scrap the TFW program (keeping a narrow stream for hard-to-fill farm jobs) and to better align overall inflows of temporary residents with the economy’s capacity.
In tandem, Conservatives pitch a housing-led jobs plan—2.3 million homes in five years and tying federal infrastructure cash to cities that actually build—aimed at boosting construction employment and easing cost pressures that keep people out of work or moving.
For Northwestern Ontario, the party links unemployment directly to stalled northern projects: a Poilievre government says it would accelerate files like Northern Road Link, Crawford Nickel and Springpole—projects that feed Thunder Bay’s supply chains—while the corridor approach is pitched to move electricity, rail and pipelines more efficiently across Canada. Add a promised 15% cut to the lowest income-tax rate to lift take-home pay and demand, and Conservatives argue this package would “bring jobs home” faster than the status quo.
The Numbers Under the Hood
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Unemployment: 7.1% (+0.2 pp m/m). 1.6M unemployed. Layoff rate 1.0% (vs 0.9% a year ago).
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Sectors: Services -67,200 overall; PSTS -26k, transport -23k, manufacturing -19k; construction +17k.
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Wages: Avg hourly wages among permanent employees +3.6% y/y to C$37.81 (Reuters); overall average wages +3.2% y/y to C$36.31 (StatCan).
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Inflation: 1.7% y/y (July); shelter still firm. Statistics Canada
