From our youth to our seniors, people are worried. Students are graduating with fewer job prospects. Workers who are losing their jobs fear they won’t soon find another. Retiring now risks not having enough to live on later.
In the U.S., the number of references to the Great Depression grows weekly as financial markets wither in response to the chaotic uncertainty of U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy announcements.
Already, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows American workers are settling for less, willing to take a wage cut just to get a new job. It’s easier to exploit people who are afraid.
In Canada, unemployment is nosing up as job vacancies shrink. Against this electoral backdrop, the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP all say they are working for workers. What, exactly, would they do for you? Here are highlights of their short- and medium-term promises.
Short term
Joblessness: Conservatives are silent on EI. The Liberals have made some modest changes and say they’ll improve EI in the coming year. The NDP would fix EI right away.
Training: The Conservatives are “backing 350,000 positions … to train red-seal apprentices to build homes” and continuing a $4,000 apprenticeship grant. The Liberals would provide “up to $15,000 for workers in priority sectors, including manufacturing, health care, construction, AI and technology” without specifying how many could benefit. The NDP would train 100,000 skilled workers for housing.
Hiring: The Conservatives would add 2,000 people to the 1st Patrol Group of the Canadian Rangers in the Arctic, and “streamline the federal public service through natural attrition and retirement with only two in three departing employees being replaced.” The Liberals would hire 35,000 more workers in early learning and child care and “thousands” of new doctors, and review program spending, resulting in “capping, not cutting, public service employment.“ The NDP would fund more public projects, creating unspecified numbers of new jobs for infrastructure, housing and East-West energy grids while recruiting ”thousands” more doctors and nurses.
Medium term
The Conservatives favour expansion of oil and gas, construction, and mining critical minerals. The Liberals’ industrial strategy expands beyond men in hard hats to include manufacturing supply chains, particularly in the auto sector, and some expanded health and child-care services. The NDP focus on improving public services and protecting existing industrial capacity rather than expanding it.
Immigration is key to all plans. The Canadian-born workforce is aging. Since the pandemic hit, 91 per cent of 1.75 million new jobs went to newcomers, of whom a significant share only had temporary resident permits.
The Liberals lowered newcomer intake targets for the next three years, though these may change again. For 2025, immigration is limited to 395,000 people, plus 673,650 temporary resident permits. The Conservatives favour a return to Harper-era immigration levels (200,000 to 250,000) and “dramatically reducing” the number of temporary foreign workers/student permits. The NDP have no numeric targets, tying immigration to economic needs, and would guarantee no temporary foreign worker is tied to a single employer.
Over the medium term Canada’s goods-producing sector, which directly accounts for 25 per cent of GDP and 20 per cent of all jobs, will take a hit during Trump’s tariff phase.
The Conservatives are betting that the relationship with the U.S. will eventually be restored. The Liberal goal of disentangling our economy from the U.S. focuses on manufacturing and energy strategies. The NDP focus seems to be less on the private sector than the adequacy of the public sector.
Long term
It’s worth mentioning two long-term issues workers are facing: mechanization of manufacturing, and rollbacks in labour rights. Both are accompanying the evolution of the job market in the U.S.
Even if manufacturing production returns, it doesn’t mean manufacturing jobs will. A new car plant in Savannah, Ga., for example, features tens of thousands of robots, and a meat-processing plant in Virginia credits increased automation and high-speed robotics with expanding its capacity.
There is always a temptation to reduce labour rights when people are most afraid. That’s already happening.
At the state level, Florida is again loosening its child labour laws. There are currently 12 states that permit children as young as 12 to work.
There are 27 so-called “right to work” states in the U.S., meaning workers can opt out of unions in those states and avoid paying dues. That makes it harder to organize workers and sustain campaigns to negotiate for better wages and working conditions. Republican Sen. Rand Paul introduced national right-to-work legislation just weeks ago.
While Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is a fan of construction unions now, in 2015 he was a full-throated fan of two anti-union bills passed by the then-Conservative government, declaring “We are talking about money that the unions are taking out of the pockets of workers by force.” Legislation repealing both bills was one of the first actions of the incoming Liberal administration.
Today’s Conservatives have done an about-face, declaring respect for union rights mean “no return to anti-union bills like C-377 or C-525, and no right-to-work laws.”
Whether you discount or embrace slogans like “Working for Workers,” political parties represent distinct ways of doing just that.
As we know, distrust and fear create their own momentum, much like hope and trust. They are untethered from economic facts. Ultimately, our expectations and choice of leadership shape reality.
Even if recession is inevitable, its depth and duration are not. That’s a function of who we elect, and what they do next.
