10 years of this shit

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Introducing CanViz, my little side project over the break to make StatCan tables more accessible.

Ya they started that like two releases ago I think. With the new revisions GDP per capita bottomed out at 2019 levels at the start of 2024 and now it's rushing upwards. I properly calculated it below (assumed no growth in population for Q3 2025)

Causal diagram.

Link to paper www.sfu.ca/~schmitt/cpp...

The real price of oil and real foreign travel cost has a correlation of *-0.893*, incredible. Like this is mathematical proof that the deflator and exchange rate effects completely swamped the actual cost of flying.

So when the price of oil went from $32 a barrel to $90 a barrel but air travel fell by this much in real terms? They had their sanity check but apparently just brushed it off.

This representation of the variable sums up the problem. The numerator is being pushed downward from the exchange rate, and the denominator is being pushed upward from the GDP deflator. The result is plummeting real prices.

Additionally they use air travel price data from the US (in USD) and then convert it to CAD. During the same period of the study the CAD massively appreciated, reaching parity with the USD. Even if US prices didn't change this makes them look much cheaper in CAD terms.

Very big problem: they take nominal and convert to real using the GDP deflator. Canada is a massive oil exporter. During the study period 2002-2008, oil prices skyrocketed.

So the result is Oil↑ -> GDP Deflator↑ -> Real air travel price mechanically↓

To establish causality they need an instrument for the supply of TFWs. They choose the "real price of air travel."

So I was doing some perusing of the temporary foreign worker program literature and I found this paper. I believe I have identified multiple critical flaws in their paper. I'm baffled as to how these were not caught.

Urban greenness in Metro Vancouver in 2025

Urban greenness in Metro Vancouver in 2025

Updated Urban Greenness data out from StatCan is out today, quantifying the "average greenness" on a 250m grid. Data is annual and goes back to 2000 and allows for some comparison (although some caution is advised).

The Jobs Report, brought to you by DoorDash.

Yup, reading that was depressing. They had a budget of 873m in 2023-2024, 90% of that is personnel, so many people are going to lose their jobs :/

But hey! At least the cuts won't be as bad as the Harper ones! 🫠

Looks like my prediction that the fall in GDP per capita would be greatly attenuated by revisions was correct! And keep in mind only data up to 2022 is finalized!

With the release of the 2022 supply and use tables and revisions, here's what the updated GDP per capita looks like. We'll have to wait later this month for 2025 updates. I just did a crude upward lift here since we only got annual up to 2024.

The media elites don't want you to know that immigrants out earn Canadians by a substantial margin, including the 2021 cohort

Implicitly blaming international students for rising youth/overall unemployment. No wonder no one wants to come! And the private sector backs them up with it too. Like this is the kinda garbage pumped out. bsky.app/profile/prio...

I just had to say something on this report by TD. Their argument for why unemployment would be higher in counterfactual world with higher population growth is drawing a straight line. Like my god, bank economists truly are topic economic minds.

HAHAHA I know right?

Workday morning rush hour for comparison. More bus lines, and more service.
(Still missing buses not sending realtime data, as well as sea bus and skytrain which don't show up in the realtime data feed.)

Wow this is crazy cool!

Lol I'm gonna post this over on Twitter wonder what the insane people over there will say 😆

I find it funny that the anti-immigration people like to cite Denmark as their success story when their youth unemployment is higher than Canada's

Crazy how Denmark's youth unemployment rate starting going up at the exact same time as in Canada, must've been all the temporary foreign workers.

Hahaha yeah I saw him post that over on Twitter. He's run out of series to use now 🤣

Data from
www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019

In addition, if StatCan were to adopt a more comprehensive definition of intangible capital (will not happen tbc) GDP would see a lift of 6.6%, 2019 would see a lift of 7.1%. If we trend the trend forward to 2024 we'd get 7.4%.

With the adoption of the 2025 SNA coming around in 2029-2030, here's the impact on nominal GDP from the inclusion of data as recommended by it.

We see a slight shift upward (average of 2.2%) over 2000-2019 with it's impact growing over time. If the trend holds 2024 will be ≈2.6% high