Bob Bratina at the Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities Committee

On May 16th, 2016. See this statement in context.

May 16th, 2016 / 4 p.m.

Liberal

Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON

Thanks very much.

I'll go to the Canadian Labour Congress, Ms. Byers and Ms. Kwan.

It's very confusing trying to determine what the real data is with regard to employment. In my city of Hamilton we have gone as low as 5.2% in the official StatsCan numbers. It may be just a little below 6% right now, which sounds to me very good, and yet there are many voices in the area saying there's an immense amount of poverty, and the jobs are not substantial jobs, so I'm not sure we're able to work from any clear data as to what the true numbers for the labour shortage are.

What would you have to say in terms of how that data is accumulated and presented? Are we able to work from numbers that are useful to us?

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