Job losses rising at a dangerous time for Canada

By Tom Parkin

March 17th, 2026

BURLINGTON, ON

OPINION

110,000 fewer Canadians working than in December; 55% of the loss in Ontario.

Canada’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose from 6.5 per cent in January to 6.7 per cent in February, according to Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey, released Friday. And the higher unemployment rate comes despite the percentage of Canadians in the labour market dropping from 65.0 per cent to 64.9 per cent.

Excepting the pandemic recession period, Canada’s participation rate hasn’t been lower since December, 1997. Ontario’s participation rate is 0.3 points lower than the national rate, at 64.6 per cent, while its rising unemployment rate, now 7.6 per cent, is 0.9 points higher than the national rate. Ontario has the second-highest unemployment rate in Canada.

The Ford calamity, bringing down the country

The loss of jobs amid Trump’s attack on Canada underscores the importance of governments not making things worse and using every possible lever and tool to boost employment.

Based on the data, Ontario is the drag on the Canada’s economy, targeted by Trump’s tariffs and damned by Doug Ford’s incompetent and ideological premiership:

• Ford has condemned non-market housing as communism, but his market-only housing approach has left construction starts at historic lows and construction jobs 11,000 lower than a year ago
• his scheme to fund the education sector with foreign student money has collapsed like a house of cards, and the sector has lost 32,000 jobs in 12 months
• failing to fix the affordability crisis is keeping people out of shops, hotels and restaurants, with 34,000 jobs gone in accommodation and food service and 11,000 killed in retail shops in 12 months
• with the EV strategy he cobbled together with Trudeau falling apart and Trump’s tariffs biting, Ontario manufacturing is down 40,000 jobs in a year.

Every Canadian is paying the price of Ontario having no coherent economic plan. While Ontario’s economy sinks, Doug Ford’s focus has been on creating a series of deflections and diversions from the corruption scandals that point at him. Last week he announced new legislation to block freedom of information requests into his dealings.

Will Carney’s solutions work? Are they fast enough?

Left East to West podcast this week spoke with Guio Jacinto, economic and trade analyst for the United Steelworkers union, about companies in the steel, aluminum and forestry sectors scrambling to find new markets.

Their trade pivot will take time and it’s unclear if Carney’s economic prescription will work — or work in time.

The Carney government’s major projects strategy has not yet finalized its goals or attracted the capital needed to go ahead. The strategy is based on the idea federal policy can “crowd in” private capital, rebounding the economy.

“My question isn’t necessarily whether or not crowding-in is real,” Jacinto told Left East to West. “My concern really is whether what the government has done so far is enough, whether we need more, and whether the medium through which they’ve done it is sufficient.”

Jacinto also expressed worry the impact of Carney’s massive “military Keynesianism” spending could be dampened because Canada lacks industries that can scale-up quickly enough. Already, Canada’s plans to replace its two heavy icebreaker coast guard ships has been delayed due to limited ship-building capacity. Significant parts of the project are being done in Finland.

And there is space open for a stronger value-adding strategy, in which a government “seeks to maximize the forward linkages beyond raw material extraction” to create jobs and industries in processing and manufacturing.

“We’ve actually lost quite a bit in the last decade in that space and gone backwards,” says Jacinto.