04-16-2024, 01:28 AM
(04-15-2024, 10:58 AM)cherrypark Wrote: Unemployment data a short search away...
Ontario unemployment is 6.8% - higher than several years preceding the pandemic and up ~1% over the last year - which I would not deem ideal and trending well in aggregate. Within those numbers is also a continued loss in manufacturing and professional sci/tech, which I don't know the exact nature of this buyer but one can guess based on the land and location needs its not in the retail and financial sectors.
I'm open to the argument that, like our suburban residential, the building standards and sprawl of industry/warehousing could and maybe should be contained. A country of less land availability would need to find ways to innovate and densify those uses too and the lack of ease to incorporate employment lands into transit is an issue to getting more people off the roads.
All that to say that I think Canada has a major challenge ahead in keeping the economic engine running. We've lost a step in growth and competition and accommodating another anchor employer in the region seems good. What would the perspective be 30 years from now, equivalent to the time TMMC has been in the region? There are many businesses and their employees who would count that economic driver as critical to their quality of life and wellbeing, as well as our tax base.
I mean, 6.8% unemployment is within the normal range, and even low for the past 30 years or so. But certainly it is trending upwards. But that is for Ontario, my impression was that the region was in a significantly better position than Ontario, but I couldn't find local data.
As for challenges to Canada, I think you are right, but I don't think another massive legacy employer actually helps. Our problems are not related to "not enough large multi-nationals", IMO....they're related instead to the cost of housing (which also cannot be solved through massive sprawl)...and a general trend to towards centralization/monopoliation/financialization of the private sector.
FWIW...I hear this same argument in the Netherlands...ASML, the company that makes the machines which manufacture silicon chips, has been rumoured to be thinking of moving parts of their operations out of the NLs along with several other large multi-nationals, and the Dutch government has been scrambling to fix that...among other things, trying to soften their anti-immigrant rhetoric since labour is a major issue for ASML.
And we also all saw how Amazon absolutely burned the cities who were begging them home their new HQ in their city.
So this isn't an Ontario problem...this is a global problem.
I think the region would be better with 10 smaller companies, that would be actual competition.
But like I said, I think there are other issues, like housing and such that are actually the cause of problems...the unemployment data confirms to me that there is no unemployment crisis that we should compromise our values and our farmland to solve. And I say again, it's so telling how willing we are to bend over backwards in this non-crisis, when we have an active housing crisis that we wouldn't (even those of us here who care about and are affected by the crisis) make the same sprawl-related sacrifices for to try to solve.