I think the conservative attempt to sell CIT cuts as a jobs programme for today is the dumbest thing since the Cabbage Patch Kid Doll. And I think the CME and C.D Howe and Jack Mintz lining up to buy one is a mark of immaturity. If the exporters want to claim that CIT cuts will help make up for the decline in profits owing to a strong dollar fine. If the C.D Howe wants to back it as a means to enhance productivity I say perhaps wishful thinking but fine. If Jack Mintz wants to sell them as the start of the process to attract his companies’ books back to Canada, (disingenuous because zero is the magic number), that is fine. If the Cons want to sell this a as productivity enhancing move which takes stock of the new reality of a strong Canadian dollar with the potential of repatriating some companies from abroad fine. But as a jobs program for today?
Really.
As I said yesterday as a jobs creation it is a pig and best lipstick which can be put on the pork is that it will produce 100,000 jobs over 7 years which is 1/10th of one percent of total employment in Canada. So a drop in the proverbial bucket of what we need now not seven years down the road.
And this brings me to the concluding criticism. Prior to the GFC of 2007 was their any indication that Canada had an unemployment problem. Were not all the headlines back then about critical jobs shortages and in essence the first time we had experience something close to full employment since the mid 70s? Given this why are the Cons trying to boost the structural level of employment and not instead focussing on its cyclical component of which the trend level of investment is not the real issue.
The real issue is demand. And with demand in for a a stall as Canadians finally have begun parring back on consumption driven debt what will increased investment and a paltry 1/10th of 1 percent in employment increase over 7 years do for aggregate demand over the next crucial two years? Answer 2/7ths of 1/10th of 1 percent.
The word that springs to mind is meagre
Anyway the faith based community from economists at the U of Laval, to Public Policy Schools in Alberta will sell it; so for all you snake oil sales people out there:
Relentlessly Progressive Political Economy 