Two years after Premier Christy Clark announced a plan to get British Columbians back to work, the B.C. Jobs Plan has failed to deliver on its promised benefits, according to a report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
The study, by CCPA economist Iglika Ivanova, shows that roughly the same percentage of British Columbians are employed today — 71% — as two years ago.
Job creation in the private sector since 2011 has been particularly weak, with 12,000 private sector jobs being lost in the first ten months of 2013.
"While the total number of jobs in B.C. has increased since the plan was announced in 2011, job creation has been weaker than it was in the fist two years of recovery [from the recession]," the report says.
While the jobs plan aimed to put B.C. in first or second place in job creation across the country, B.C. currently sits in eighth place.
The province has added 26,000 net new jobs since 2011 and has the fourth lowest unemployment rate, jobs minister Shirley Bond said in a statement.
“We are working tirelessly to ensure that there are final investment decisions on some of the proposed LNG plants in 2014,” Bond wrote. “We are also seeing growing strength in the forest sector and mines opening in our province.”
Since monthly job numbers can fluctuate, Bond said, the government focuses on low unemployment and attracting investment to the province.
The report notes that 2011 marked a slowdown in job recovery not only in B.C., but across Canada. Only Saskatchewan and Newfoundland have lower unemployment rates today than before the global financial crisis hit in 2008.
While the jobs plan aimed to create jobs thoughout the province, only the Lower Mainland, Northeast and Kootenay regions have recovered the number of jobs lost in the recession, according to the CCPA report.
The B.C. government spent $5.7 million to advertise the jobs plan in 2011 and $3.16 million in 2012, according to documents obtained by freedom of information requests.
The CCPA report recommends the B.C. government invest in a jobs strategy that does not focus so heavily on resource industries, boost hiring in the public sector and put more money into childcare and education.
