Employment Minister Jason Kenney explained that "none of us know exactly what is going on in the labour market of today" because ... math!!!
The quest was made even more difficult by ignoring StatsCan's official statistics showing a declining job vacancy rate in favour of using data based on hiring "an outside software program that searches for online job ads" and adds them up.
This data showed the "job vacancy rate has been increasing steadily since 2009" - which, as it happens, turns out to be spectacularly useful for bolstering the Cons' corporate-friendly argument in favour of importing temporary foreign workers.
But why did the wonky Kijiji-based data falsely show an increase in labour shortage in Canada?
Chris Harris, Kijiji’s head of Jobs and Housing, provides a clue.
He explained : "the job postings on the site are rising in part because the site itself has had major growth in terms of popularity."
Awesome.
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Update : Good read from Susan Delacourt: Trolling the web for job data, Conservative-style
Shorter : The problem wasn’t fake ID in the 2011 election; the problem was fake phone calls. The same Cons who were outraged at the supposed intrusiveness of the gun registry and long form census have spent the last decade scooping up info on Canadians for their CIMS political database -- yet were strangely unfussed about the data breach of CIMS in the last election.
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