Federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair isn’t gaining many allies in his fight to paint the oil sands as the reason for job losses in manufacturing in Ontario and Quebec.
The latest voice to tell Mulcair he’s wrong is the research director at the Institute for Research on Public Policy.
Jeremy Leonard says their institute decided to put Mulcair’s claims that the energy sector is making the dollar rise and hurting manufacturing to the test.
“And the answer that our analysis shows is that it’s not the high dollar that’s the main contributor to the woes of the Canadian manufacturing sector,” he said.
“The main source of the problem is competitive pressures in markets that Canadian manufacturers serve,” he said. “Pressures have increased dramatically over the last 10 years, due to the impact of China, but also other countries in southeast Asia and South America.”
He says even if the dollar were weaker, the manufacturing sector would still be having problems.
He added that the fact that manufacturing is declining while the energy sector is succeeding, doesn’t necessarily imply the two are related.
