Questions?
Comments? E-mail Robert T. Chisholm, Associate Member OSPE, at attention_to_the_facts@hotmail.com
A1.3. MORE CONCERNING THE PUBLIC MIS-REPORTING AND OBFUSCATION ABOUT
UNEMPLOYMENT AND UNDEREMPLOYMENT.
The comments in this section apply to the NCR and
contain important and unavoidable lessons for everywhere else in Canada.
(1) From Dr. Ray Barton, C.E.O. of Vitesse Re-Skilling
in Kanata, Mar 09 2014, concerning the current situation:-
“There is no doubt there is a new reality in the
labour market both from the worker side looking for work and the employer
side. All of the safety nets like EI were designed in a different era
when employment was generally long term. EI does not adequately serve
temporary and contract workers which is the highest portion of workers
today. Statistics Canada relies heavily on EI data to compile their
trends and is therefore flawed from the start. Statistics Canada also
does not distinguish between short-term service jobs and full time meaningful
jobs using the skills the workers or professional has developed….. However, the
new reality is complex from every angle and while we know the old models on
reporting on the labour market don’t work, governments and other agencies cling
to the old models as moving to new models is risky and the transition not easy.
In other words there is no silver bullet or guaranteed path of success for
those who hold the levers of power. Of greater concern however, is there
seems to be little concern for those caught in the wheels of change -- AND
there should be.”
To sum up: Statistics Canada’s methods have not kept
pace with the requirements of the times.
(2) Why this problem has developed.
Reference:
"Stats man strives to never be ‘boring’. Statistics Canada chief ensures
reports, like Tuesday's census, tell story behind figures." Patrick Dare,
The Ottawa Citizen, March 12, 2007
Quote: "One tradition that the chief
statistician does cling to is the agency’s practice of listening carefully to
what government and industry clients say they need, while
scrupulously maintaining its independence.
“The moment the public begins to perceive that we might be shading to favour
certain
perspectives, we might as well close shop. Who would want our data if they
can’t trust
it?” says Mr. Fellegi. “Once the results cannot be trusted, we are basically
useless.”
End of quote
The root cause of the trouble appears to be a lack of
input to Statistics Canada from the general public and organized labour –
or, for that matter, other organisations such as Vitesse Re-Skilling which has
seen the problem of Ottawa’s high tech unemployment continually
mis-represented, downplayed and wrongly analysed in mass media articles and
reports. The said reports were based partly on official analysis coming from
Statistics Canada. They were also based partly on employment trends in the
sector issued by O.C.R.I., initially under Jeffrey Dale followed by Claude Haw,
which they used continually in attempts to “prove” that the problem was solved
or nearly so. But the O.C.R.I. portrayal was completely flawed partly because
it ignored basic principles of counting introduced in elementary school, and they
never included any proof that the people hired during up-turns in the
employment numbers were in fact all drawn from the people laid off during
earlier down-turns. The only way to establish proof of what was or is happening
is to compare the social insurance numbers of the people laid off with those
belonging to the people re-hired subsequently.
The basic counting method that must be applied involves “sets” and Venn
diagrams. O.C.R.I. never attempted this.
O.C.R.I.’s approach was proved incorrect beyond any possible doubt when
Statistics Canada released its “Life After the High Tech Downturn” report on
July 20th 2007 and the latter did in fact use the correct
mathematical approach involving “sets” and Venn diagrams. Since then, O.C.R.I.
has been re-tasked and re-named as Invest Ottawa, under Bruce Lazenby.
The problem has also been continually compounded by
two other factors:-
(a) Statistics Canada’s use of terms to describe most
of the people affected as “…dropped out of the labour force…” or “…given up
looking for work…”, with no proof that these were or are actually valid
descriptions of the people affected, as opposed to mere designations.
(b) Apparent lack of any comprehensive reporting on
under-employment, or any agreed and clear system for investigating the worst
effects of it and quantifying it mathematically.
If things were being done properly over the years and
decades, the methods in question could have been adjusted to meet the
changing requirements caused by the proliferation of short-term contracts, part
time work, under-employment etc. - and then we wouldn't be stuck with the
situation described.
To sum up: part of the trouble over the years has
been a lack of dialogue between Statistics Canada and organisations
representing people unemployed and under-employed.
But there may be much more than the foregoing behind
the problem just described, because:-.
(1) If the "industry clients" referred to by Ivan Fellegi include people
with no interest in the issues that we are talking about here - for instance
rich and greedy bankers - then Statistics Canada could find itself consulting
people only interested in cheap labour and cheapening people, who might
like to exploit the use of terms like "…dropped out of the labour
force…" and "…given up looking for work…" for emotional and
political reasons, thinking that WE will never find out what they are doing -
because everybody is being made to "…look the other way…". It can also produce situations where the
business community and the mass media can talk about a “job boom”, “hiring
boom” etc. even when there are hundreds or even thousands of people all
competing for the same job, every time a job is advertised publicly. The terms
“job boom”, “hiring boom” etc. are actually relative, and in practice actually
mean “job boom” etc. RELATIVE TO WHAT
PEOPLE ARE USED TO – which does NOT mean that there are enough jobs for
everybody who wants one. The business community, the general public, politicians
etc. can then exploit this situation, and probably were and are, in order to
“conveniently” neglect or refuse to understand people who have persistent
trouble getting work even during the said “job boom”.
(2) Soviet-inspired disinformation campaigns during the Cold War could also
have been a factor behind installing and reinforcing certain long-standing and
“convincing” social prejudices and attitudes that would have been popular with
some people in positions of power and influence - such as bankers, other
business leaders, lawyers and some politicians. Such disinformation campaigns
could easily have been carried on without any forged documents being “planted“
by the Soviets in mass media reports etc. and would have given rise to no
suspicion. Soviet-controlled agents
could have done it simply by socializing with certain people in positions of
power and influence, and agreeing with and/or reinforcing their pre-existing
social prejudices. For instance it’s not hard to assert that some people - and perhaps all those people having
trouble finding work during a so-called “job boom” etc. - are simply “dropouts”
or “lazy”, “weak and stupid”, “defeatist” , “have negative attitudes”, etc. The
aim behind such Soviet campaigns of disinformation and obfuscation was always
to create confusion and demoralize the populations of Western countries, cause
governments to mis-perceive problems so as to make them always take the wrong
actions in the hope of solving them, thus reducing or eliminating the
legitimacy of governments – so as to prepare the target countries for takeover
by Communist dictatorships controlled by the Soviet Union. Another dimension to
this was to foment trouble between the trade unions and employers; examples of
this, in the U.K., are described by former Czech spy Josef Frolik in his 1974
book, “The Frolik Defection”. Former Soviet spy Yuri Bezmenov who defected to
the U.S. in 1970 describes, in a number of Youtube videos, the principles
behind Soviet-controlled disinformation campaigns. So far as Canada is
concerned it is impossible to prove now, in 2014, that such things were going
on but neither can the possibility be completely ruled out.
Irrespective of what was actually happening, the fact is
that the system is seriously flawed and requires change.
In addition there is a problem in Canada with people
labelled as "…dropped out of the labour force…" and "…given up
looking for work…" being treated as “unpersons” after the fashion described
by George Orwell in his 1949 novel, “Nineteen Eighty Four” . This was a tactic calculated to make it
appear the people referred to do not exist and never did.
Questions?
Comments? E-mail Robert T. Chisholm, Associate Member OSPE, at attention_to_the_facts@hotmail.com
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