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That would amount to about 75,000 additional jobs if the increase in government spending were done efficiently, such as on infrastructure.

Coincidentally, the Canadian economy has created only 72,000 jobs over the past 12 months.

The report notes that such a change in strategy would mean keeping the federal deficit at about $10 billion over those three years, but Scarth argues that is insignificant economically because it would mean missing the stated target of reducing national debt-to-GDP to 25% by 2021 by a single percentage point.

A government that emphasizes its commitment to protect the interests of working Canadians should not reject this opportunity

“A government that emphasizes its commitment to protect the interests of working Canadians should not reject this opportunity to lower unemployment when it can be achieved without a serious trade-off,” Scarth states.

The report cautions that such an approach is not open to the Ontario government and, in fact, is critical of the provincial Liberal’s recent budget that increases the deficit as a backward step given the province’s burdensome debt.

The paper, which at time reads like a primer an economics, argues that sub-national governments like provinces don’t have the same ability to stimulate the economy through spending, partly because of spillage to other provinces and partly because their actions don’t directly impact the country’s terms of trade.

C.D. Howe economist Finn Poschmann says that is why stimulus spending in countries like Greece, which have no control over the value of the euro, tend not to work, or not work optimally.