Don Mills (I)

Don Mills is puzzled:

“The good news is that the numbers have been coming down, generally speaking, going in the right direction,” said Mills. “The bad news is that this does not make sense to me. How can you be a have province with a 13 and a half per cent unemployment rate? How is that possible? There’s a disconnect here.”

Why, yes, there is a disconnect, Don.

"Have province" means a province which does not receive equalization, its own-source revenue, per-capita, being above the threshold for receiving equalization.

In any province, this status is only very remotely connected to employment levels. And in a province such as the one where the puzzled Don Mills was speaking, where two industries account for a huge chunk of the provincial own-source revenue, but a very small chunk of the labour force, that connection is even remoter still.

So there you go.