Border signs going up as joblessness goes down
Premier Doug Ford launched his $106,700 “open for business” border-crossing signs in Sarnia as Statistics Canada revealed Ontario unemployment continues to hover near its lowest rate in a generation.
“Doesn’t that sign look beautiful?” Ford said Friday morning of the “Welcome to Ontario: Open For Business” signage near the Blue Water Bridge to Michigan. “You’ve been hearing for months that we’re going to put signs right across every single border in Ontario to tell the world, especially our great neighbours to the south, that Ontario is open for business,” said the premier.
There will eventually be 25 such signs placed at all 18 of the province’s land crossings with American states. After a week of opposition and media questions about the price tag of the Tory campaign promise, Ford’s office said later Friday that the new and replacement signage would cost taxpayers an estimated $106,700. The blue metal highway signs, designed inhouse and produced by the Ministry of Transportation, range from $3,300 to $8,000, including manufacturing, shipping, and installation.
“Of the 18 locations where signs will be upgraded, three locations are missing four signs and must be replaced. The cost of replacing the four missing signs is estimated to be $32,000, and the estimated cost of upgrading 21 existing signs is $74,700,” Ford’s office said. New Democrat MPP Catherine Fife said that’s a waste of public money, a point underscored by the fact the economy continues to perform well.
“We’ve seen this government stumbling along,” Fife (Waterloo) told reporters at Queen’s Park.
Ford’s announcement came the same morning as Statistics Canada’s monthly jobs survey revealed last month’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 per cent, a decrease of 0.3 percentage points since September.
“On a year-over-year basis, employment in the province rose by 83,000 due to more fulltime work,” said Statistics Canada. That’s a 1.2 per cent increase in employment since this time last year.