Babel has heard from its man at Queen’s Park. The electoral district sent Mr. Jackson there in early October. We received mail from him this week and he also signed an article in the Examiner. There is little to say about the mailing piece; the recycle bin was already filled with copies from our neighbours, so we added ours. The Examiner article, we read.
The first thing that was obvious about the article was that our new Member of the Provincial Parliament has not spent his time taking a journalism course. This was written for him. It was very modest of him to only have his name at the beginning and end of the article. Usually something like this is written as a news release and the MPP’s name is worked into every second paragraph.
The story was based on Statistics Canada’s release of unemployment figures in October of last year. It also picked up on Conservative Leader Tim Hudak’s mid-December release that linked unemployment to the perceived weaknesses of Ontario’s apprenticeship programs. Whoever wrote the MPP’s article, failed to include the information on the subject from the mayor’s blog at Babel’s city hall Internet site.
The more timely response by Babel’s mayor to the unemployment figures last October pointed out the problem was that Statscan emphasized the donut hole instead of the donut. The mayor, justifiably, complained that Statscan made headlines of the unemployment and ignored the similarly high rate of employment. It is a factor of the average age of people in Babel. With its younger population, Babel is also near the top of the charts of the percentage of people employed.
Tiny Tim Hudak’s December release was just to blame Premier McGuinty for all of Ontario’s unemployment woes. This was hardly a surprise. What was confusing was that he explained that Ontario only allowed one new apprentice for every four journeyman trades persons in the province. While not a trained economist such as the Leader of the Opposition at Queen’s Park, we must admit that the ratio rule makes absolutely no sense. Surely there are various trades that need more apprentices and some that need fewer apprentices. Is nobody doing any forecasting in this?
But our earnest MPP gives a plug to Georgian College for its efforts with apprenticeship programs. We expect we can all agree with that as we face a new year in Babel with renewed determination.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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