The Harper government came in for some ridicule last month when it emerged it had relied on data from job postings site Kijiji to argue that Canada’s job vacancy rate is rising.

It turned out Kijiji allows multiple postings of the same job to different sections, meaning the site’s numbers had inflated the total number of available jobs. Oops.

Now the federal government is reportedly ditching Kijiji data, and the effect on Canada’s job picture is instantaneous: According to the Globe’s calculations, with the Kijiji numbers out, Canada’s job vacancy rate plummets from the 4 per cent Finance Canada touted in the March budget, to just 1.5 per cent.

The change “essentially erases the dire warnings of labour shortages that Ottawa has used as justification for expanding the controversial temporary foreign worker program,” the Globe reports.

It also undermines a key argument the Tories have been making: That they have been strong economic stewards under whose leadership Canada has had among the strongest job gains among developed countries. (The latest numbers suggest Canada is way down at fifth place among the G7 countries when it comes to job growth.)

Frankly, those Department of Finance numbers never made much sense. Just a few weeks before the federal budget dropped in March, Statistics Canada reported that Canada’s job vacancy rate hit a record low last December — the country had the lowest number of jobs available per job-seeker on record. The rate was 1.3 per cent, down from 1.5 per cent a year earlier.

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