The comments came after new figures from Statistics Canada showed B.C. lost nearly 16,000 jobs in January, the second-highest number of job losses in the country, behind only Ontario.
Bell said this is not the time to abandon the Liberal jobs plan because B.C.’s unemployment rate last month remained at 6.3 per cent, well below the national level of seven per cent.
But NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston said since the jobs plan was introduced in September 2011, B.C. has seen stagnant job numbers overall and huge losses in the private sector.
Ralston also pointed out at the same time the government is spending $15 million in tax money on ads telling people the jobs plan is working great. He said the ads claim B.C. is leading the country in job creation, but that’s incorrect. In fact, B.C. is now second-worst of all the provinces for job growth.
Victoria, on the other hand, held steady last month on the labour front.
The unemployment rate in the city remained at 5.4 per cent for the second straight month with 188,800 employed, a slight improvement from December, when there were 187,500 employed in the region. The numbers are even better when compared with January 2012, when there were 182,100 people employed, though the labour force was also smaller then, leading to an unemployment rate of 5.7 per cent.
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