Union releases damning report on economic performance
A damning report on the economic record of the Conservative government, released today by Unifor, says Canada’s economy has not performed so poorly since the end of the Second World War.
Unifor economists Jim Stanford and Jordan Brennan tracked government performance from 1946 to 2014 for the report, Rhetoric and Reality: Evaluating Canada’s Economic Record Under the Harper Government.
In it, economists concluded that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government ranked dead last.
“Canada’s economy has never performed worse, since the end of the Second World War, than under the present Conservative government,” the union said. “The Harper government ranks last among the nine postwar governments, and by a wide margin —falling well behind the second-worst government, which was the (Brian) Mulroney government of 1984 to 1993.”
The report also noted such poor economic results couldn’t be blamed on blowback from the 2008 recession. Since 1946, Canada and its governments experienced 10 recessions, but the recovery from the most recent 2008 downturn has been the weakest than those prior.
Unifor compiled its data from Statistics Canada and other public sources regarding 16 key indicators typically used to demonstrate economic progress and well-being, namely work (including job creation and unemployment rates), production (including GDP and productivity growth) and distribution and debt (such as income, inequality, personal and government debt).
For 13 of those 16 main indicators, the current government placed last or second to last among all postwar Prime Ministers, according to the union.
