The fact it was predictable didn\u2019t make the election result in Alberta any easier to take. Despite distant echoes of homophobia and misogyny, current allegations of electoral corruption and a clutch of dodgy candidates, Jason Kenney and his United Conservative Party won in a landslide. Albertans threw out Rachel Notley, a leader widely admired, and replaced her with someone many people, for good reason, can\u2019t abide.<\/p>\n
A reason for this, we were told repeatedly, is the dreadful state of the Alberta economy. As many would have it, since world oil prices started to fall in 2014, Alberta\u2019s been in an economic death spiral, a downward trajectory Notley\u2019s NDP government failed to reverse.<\/p>\n
The dire narrative began years before the election and continued afterward, with reporters and pundits explaining the outcome as the result of a \u201cbattered economy,\u201d \u201cstuttering economic growth,\u201d \u201ca recession that left looming shadows\u201d and \u201cyears of economic pain.\u201d All of that hyperbole was in just the first few paragraphs of the Globe and Mail\u2019s<\/em> morning-after report. For its part, the National Post<\/em> informed readers that Alberta has been a recession since 2016 while columnist and oil fan Rex Murphy, blaming that on Trudeau, referred to \u201cmassive losses \u201c of jobs \u201dduring the full three years of his government.\u201d<\/p>\n The fact that this sad tale told by the national media relies on gross exaggeration of some facts and disregard of others will not be news to my readers. The tendency of the media to magnify Alberta\u2019s economic problems in general and those of oil and gas workers in particular is a theme I\u2019ve been writing about for a while, all the way back to January 2016<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n At that time a story on the front page of the Globe<\/em>, relying only upon employment numbers for the month of December, claimed that 2015 was the worst year for employment losses in Alberta \u201csince the dark days of the national energy program.” The fact was, employment actually increased in 2015. There was a significant drop in 2016, but as I noted at the time \u201cany job losses that take place will be to employment totals that have increased by about 130,000 since 2012.\u201d<\/p>\n Distorted as it was, that Globe<\/em> story was a harbinger of the media\u2019s propensity to ignore longer-term trends while cherry-picking short-term dips in employment or oil prices to support their bleak recital of Alberta\u2019s economic situation.<\/p>\n Employment grew<\/strong><\/p>\n Alberta\u2019s economy has indeed \u00a0come down from the heady days of a decade ago when real GDP was growing at close to four per cent a year and Atlantic Canadians were moving to Alberta in droves to work. But the economy has rebounded since 2016, something the media and Conservatives in Alberta and Ottawa overlook. I wrote again about that tendency last December<\/a><\/strong>, when Stats Canada put a damper on daily cries of doom and gloom in the House of Commons with its monthly jobs report showing a big increase in Alberta jobs in November. The agency later revised those numbers downward, but the fact remains that average monthly employment in Alberta for 2018 was higher than it was in 2014, before the oil price drop, as Table 1 shows.<\/p>\n\n (The table – compiled from CANSIM 14-10-0090-01 – shows that despite the increase in employment, unemployment was significantly higher in 2018 than it was in 2014. That was due to an increase of more than 100,000 in the labour force, a problem that provinces like Nova Scotia would no doubt like to have).<\/p>\n The percentage increase in jobs in Alberta between 2014 and 2018 was 2.47 per cent. Table 2 (from CANSIM 14-10-0018-01) shows that\u2019s about \u00a0half the national average. But it’s much better than oil-producing Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador, not to mention New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. By far the largest increase is in British Columbia, burdened with the \u201cjob-killing\u201d carbon tax.<\/p>\n\n Another media staple has been to focus on oil\u2019s capital, Calgary, with its double-digit commercial office vacancy rate presented as a surrogate for economic despair, pain and what have you. But according to Stats Canada Table 14-10-0090-01, average monthly employment in the Calgary region in 2018 was 892,500, up 4.12 per cent from 2014. Edmonton was up by 4.47 per cent over the same period. Even the beleaguered Wood Buffalo area, directly hit by the oil sands price slump and the devastating Fort McMurray forest fires, has seen a small increase in employment since 2016.<\/p>\n Such inconvenient facts don\u2019t seem to matter. Last week, under the headline \u201cAlbertans prepare to elect a government in a climate of deep anxiety,\u201d the CBC reported \u201cjob losses have been staggering. Alberta lost almost 17,000 jobs in January alone.\u201d The CBC report not only ignored the immediate past \u2013 that is a 44,000-job increase <\/em>in 2018 – but also failed to mention that there have been several positive developments just since January. Those included an 18,000 increase in full-time employment and a 10,000 drop in unemployment in March. Those facts were part of the monthly Labour Force Survey released on April 5, but not fitting the media frame, were ignored in the CBC report.<\/p>\n Oil workers<\/strong><\/p>\n Of course, the overall improvement in jobs would be cold comfort to oil industry workers who have lost their jobs. However, the number of individuals directly affected has also been exaggerated in the media and by Kenney and his Conservative allies in Parliament The latter frequently claim the loss of 100,000 oil industry jobs, and a front page article in the Globe and Mail<\/em> last week went even further, claiming that \u201cthe collapse in oil prices wiped out 133,000 jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n If the latter reference is to overall employment, then, as Table I showed, those jobs have come back, and then some. As for oil and gas industry employment, specific numbers for Alberta are not easily available. Stats Canada’s reports combine oil and gas industry employment with mining and quarrying, showing a decrease in payroll employment in that sector from 133,053 in 2014 to 104,458 in 2018. That\u2019s a big loss, but a far cry from the numbers being tossed around in the media.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n\t \n<\/td> 2014<\/th> 2015<\/th> 2016<\/th> 2017<\/th> 2018<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n \n\t Population<\/td> 3,281,800<\/td> 3,353,800<\/td> 3,398,800<\/td> 3,428,800<\/td> 3,470,400<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t Labour Force<\/td> 2,386,200<\/td> 2,449,200<\/td> 2,464,600<\/td> 2,481,700<\/td> 2,494,800<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t Employment<\/td> 2,274,600<\/td> 2,301,100<\/td> 2,263,800<\/td> 2,286,900<\/td> 2,330,700<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t Unemployment<\/td> 111,700<\/td> 148,000<\/td> 200,800<\/td> 194,700<\/td> 164,100<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t Unemployment Rate<\/td> 4.7<\/td> 6.0<\/td> 8.1<\/td> 7.8<\/td> 6.6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n \n\n
\n\t \nCanada<\/th> 4.80%<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n \n\t Newfoundland and Labrador<\/td> (-5.57%)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t Prince Edward Island<\/td> 2.70%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t Nova Scotia<\/td> 1.85%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t New Brunswick<\/td> (-0.01%)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t Quebec<\/td> 4.99%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t Ontario<\/td> 5.30%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t Manitoba<\/td> 3.38%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t Saskatchewan<\/td> (-0.02%)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t Alberta<\/td> 2.47%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t British Columbia<\/td> 9.45%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n