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What about the return of jobs to Alberta? The NDP recently bragged that “nearly 49,000 jobs were created here over the last year,” which refers to the increase of 48,500 jobs for the 12 months ending June 2017. But it turns out — even if we ignore the decrease of 14,400 jobs in July — that this employment “recovery” is actually just a mirage: 41,900 of the 48,500 jobs were in the public sector, financed by deficits of over $10 billion at the provincial level and of nearly $30 billion in Ottawa.

What about the return of jobs to Alberta?

For a clue as to how well this strategy works, Alberta need only to look to the inglorious example of Ontario, where from 2003 to 2015 private sector employment grew a paltry 7.0 per cent while public sector employment increased by 23.0 per cent. Over the same time period, Ontario’s real GDP per capita increased only 6.9 per cent, compared to 13.0 per cent in the rest of Canada.

This government employment growth ignited a public debt explosion in Ontario under the Liberals — and the debt is exploding yet faster today in Alberta under the NDP. Nevertheless, Finance Minister Joe Ceci claims that the NDP’s “approach is working” — which is true, I suppose, for those whose incomes are paid for by the taxes of current and future generations of Albertans. A key pillar to the NDP approach, according to Ceci, is the government’s investments aimed at creating jobs and diversifying the economy.

The logic is that Alberta is most prosperous when investments in the economy are made by NDP politicians. The NDP imagines that it alone possesses the knowledge on how best to deploy economic resources to create the best jobs and the most prosperity — and that people who actually run profitable job-creating businesses possess no such knowledge.